


Snapshots from the Childhood of Hubert von Vestra Divided into Three Distinct Parts

by AmethystTribble



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood, But I'm going to be honest, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Fluff and Angst, Gap Filler, Gen, Hubert gets siblings too, I have given El's siblings names, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Murder, Unreliable Narrator, What if... I had a lot of unnecessary feelings about the mean rat man? Haha... Unless?, and then it never really gets better, this gets really dark really fast, y'all know the backstory you know what i'm getting at
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2020-12-17 18:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21058904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmethystTribble/pseuds/AmethystTribble
Summary: Before Garreg Mach, and the patricide, and the war... Hubert was sure he was a child once. But he could not quite remember when that was. Or rather: when that childhood ended.In which Hubert and Edelgard are children, until suddenly they are still children. But alone.





	1. A Friend

**Author's Note:**

> This is hella not beta read. I really just needed to post it before it consumed my soul.

There were a few things Hubert had known his entire life; simple immutable facts that existed outside of the realm of ‘learning’. One was Carmilla. She was barely a year his junior, and had always existed as a part of Hubert’s life and memory, as steadfastly there as Mother and Father. They shared the nursery for three years, and were only split up because their familiarity could not make them get along. Mother tried to maintain that Hubert was banished to his own room because of the birth of Jonathan, but Father would admit that it was because Carmilla bit Hubert while he was napping. Still, even as they grew up, she would crawl into his bed most nights, rather than sleep alone. Carmilla lingered at his side. 

_A friend._

The second thing that Hubert had always known was that the Vestras had a certain image, and that it must be maintained. As he, Carmilla, and little Jonathan were dressed in dour blues and blacks and purples, Hubert could not think of a reason to question it. When strangers spoke to him, he gave grave nods. Carmilla would pinch him for fidgeting and Hubert responded in kind. They were silent children, and while some seemed unnerved by it, Mother and Father always commended them lavishly for holding their tongues in public. 

_A shadow._

Most importantly, though, Hubert couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know about the Royal Family, and his duty to them. He used to think that one’s purpose in life must be known to them upon birth. Of course, he believed that before he knew about the limitless complexities of the world, before he knew about conflicts of interest and choices and what orders could entail. He was only four at the time. 

When Jonathan was born, an ugly, red little thing, Hubert watched and listened as Father softly talked to the baby, never quite a lullaby. “You’re a clever one aren’t you?” Father murmured, “You’ll serve Their Highnesses well, a sweet companion for the littlest princess. Won’t you keep her safe?” Again and again.

Hubert went and asked Carmilla if Father had talked like that to them, and she gave him the blandest look in her repertoire. “Duh,” Carmilla drawled before going back to playing with her kitten— and inferior pet to his far more practical hound, Maurice— and Hubert was then forced to reevaluate some things. That was when he realized that perhaps he hadn’t simply always known, but had been taught about his duty. 

He went and asked Father next, who huffed a laugh. 

“Of course, I told you. Where did you think knowledge comes from, Hubert?”

Hubert was too busy being terrified for the first time in his young life to answer. “But then how?” he wailed, tears gathering in his eyes and fingers clasped so tightly the rest of his body was shaking in an effort to steady his hands. “How do I protect Their Highnesses?”

He didn’t _know_, he would have to learn. And Hubert felt hopelessly behind in his studies.

Father had pet his head and held him close, and said, “There is plenty of time, yet, Hubert. And you are already learning, everything is in place, I promise. You will do well, so well, as head of House Vestra. There’s no need to rush, my boy. All you need to know for now is what you already know. You are a servant, the Emperor’s faithful knife in the night. Ever loyal, ever vigilant. I think you’re doing well so far.”

Hubert sniffed. But he understood a little better.

_A knife._

_________________________________________

At age six, Hubert was introduced to the Emperor.

His Majesty was— surprisingly enough— a man. A relatively normal looking man at that, with ashy hair and blue eyes and no crest engraved on his face to suggest his divinity. He wasn’t even as tall as Father. But from where His Majesty sat upon his throne, he smiled so kindly at Hubert that the boy was certain he was looking at the sun. 

_Ah_, Hubert had thought, _Yes, this is it._

If not for Father’s hand on his shoulder, Hubert was certain that he would have forgotten all of Mother’s lessons and let his mouth gape. Instead, he kept his hands behind his back so as to not fidget, and bowed as low as he could go. Father was warm and close and that was good, because Hubert was shaking.

The words, “I swear to serve you and yours faithfully, Your Majesty,” fell clumsily from his mouth.

The Emperor laughed gently, as did a few of the people surrounding him. They were all as lightly colored and bright as him, with eyes of blue or purple and ashen hair and kind smiles. 

“I’m sure you will, young Master Hubert,” His Majesty said. “Abraham, you have such a lively and verbose boy.”

Father bowed and gave his thanks, but Hubert could not help but stare at the royal children. Because that was who surrounded His Majesty, Their Highnesses. Hubert knew all their names from his lessons.

_Ionius, the future tenth, and his younger twin, Brynhilde._

_Visna._

_The triplets, Lycaon, Friedrich, and Wilhelm._

_Marta._

_Beron— who was only just a year older than Hubert!_

_Edelgard._

_ And, Liesl, the little baby in her eldest sister’s arms._ The queen was still ‘abed from the birth’; that’s what Mother said.

Their Highnesses, to whom his loyalty was pledged and his life dedicated. He would serve the Emperor, Prince Ionius who was so tall and so much older than him. Hubert didn’t feel big enough for the task, but he kept his serious face on and tried to stand on his tip toes.

_________________________________________

Father started taking Hubert to the palace all the time after that. While he worked, Hubert was shoved in with the royal children; the oldest of whom were eight years his senior and the youngest being six years his junior. He slotted himself into place with Lord Beron, a bossy seven-year-old who couldn’t look back from chasing after his older sister, Lady Marta, long enough to see Hubert. But he was hardly deterred!

Rather, as Hubert sat among the hedges while Beron and Marta had lunch with their other siblings, he stringently stuck to his duty. Even if Hubert was far too smart to have not realized that the game of hide-and-seek was long since over. Beron came to find him later in the afternoon, shock written all over his face. He seemed to have realized that whatever orders he gave— any of them gave— Hubert would follow. 

The first time Beron asked him to jump in the pond, Hubert barely hesitated. Then it was crawling under bushes, and sneaking into rooms they weren’t supposed to be in, and touching a button on Lord Arundel’s coat. Marta once said he should drink all the tea in the pot real fast, and Hubert was sick all over the roses. 

With each order he grew less and less graceful as he complied. Hubert was getting scolded every day, sent home filthy and hurt and humiliated because Marta told him not to tell any adults about their games. Carmilla said Hubert was acting like a disgrace— _Father said so_— and eventually his patience… snapped.

When he next came to play, Beron ordered him to spend all day walking around with his shoelaces tied together and Hubert decided enough was certainly enough. At first he just shoved Beron to the ground and told him to, “stop!” Then Beron pushed back, and Marta yelled, but they were too busy hitting each other to listen. _Slap, smack, thud,_ and Hubert was wrestling the prince who was stronger but not bigger than him to the ground. Then Beron’s shoe was in Hubert’s stomach, and his fist in the eyes, and Hubert was on the bottom. Hubert punched Beron in the nose.

There was an insistent tugging at Hubert’s hands that wasn’t from Beron— one of the prince’s wrists was firmly caught in Hubert’s grip, while the other ripped at Hubert’s hair— but he couldn’t think past the anger long enough to stop. 

They didn’t know who did it, Hubert or Beron. But when a piercing shriek reached their ears, the boys sprung apart, and took stock of what they hadn’t previously seen. In the middle of the hallway, a small tuft of little girl sobbed. Beron bounded to his feet, screaming for his mother and running off in the direction Marta had already disappeared in, but Hubert could only stare. 

Another heart-wrenching cry pulled him from his revery, and Hubert rushed over to pull the girl up, heart pounding in more fear and pain than he had ever felt in his life. Little Lady Edelgard— who always hung off Marta’s skirts and followed the older children around— was sobbing. For good reason too, because there was blood all over her mouth, dripping down the front of her dress and onto the ground and she was missing a tooth and Hubert was suddenly very aware that he was crying too. 

Hiccuping and choking on tears, and Hubert now understood why his heart was banging against his ribcage. _Lady Edelgard is hurt, she’s hurt,_ it was his job to keep her safe and she was hurt! Hubert cried harder.

Gently, he reached down and picked Edelgard up. He staggered under her weight, just a little. But Edelgard wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders, and he was able to keep them both up. And then he ran as fast as he could to where he knew Father was. It was a big meeting, with a lot of angry looking adults, and Hubert did what he was never supposed to do when other adults were around. He spoke. 

“Edelgard is hurt!” Hubert wailed, and then it was all a frenzy. The little princess was taken from his arms, and Father dragged him from the room by the arm, more harshly than Father had ever touched him in his life.

“What happened?” Father snapped, but Hubert was still crying and he could barely speak.

“She got hurt! We weren’t paying attention and she, she—!”

“You are Lady Edelgard’s servant!” Father snapped, “You must protect her with your life!”

_I know_, Hubert thought with every beat of his heart, _I know._ He was still crying.

_________________________________________

Beron didn’t tell anyone that they had been fighting. Hubert couldn’t find it in himself to be grateful, in fact he had _wanted_ Beron to tell on him. He hit his prince. He might have hit his princess, who was even younger than Carmilla! Hubert knew deep in his bones that he deserved whatever punishment that would warrant; the paddle, a branch across his knuckles, a lashing! Hubert would gladly walk to the execution stand if asked.

But no one punished him, besides Father. He was confined to his room for days for neglecting Lady Edelgard. 

When Hubert was once more presented before the royal family, it was to apologize to Lady Edelgard. He bowed low, and spoke as quietly as possible, trying to keep from breaking down in tears again. Edelgard, in her four-year-old wisdom, just grinned broadly, showing off the new gaping hole in her teeth. She patted Hubert’s cheeks, paying careful mind not to disturb the bruises there. 

“We’re friends!” she chirped, and turned to half look at him and half look at her siblings who were standing back. “Gonna be nice now?”

Beron, standing next to a contrite Marta, had a fresh black eye, matching perfectly with Hubert’s. Neither he nor Marta could meet Hubert’s eyes, but they mumbled their assent.

“Wonderful! Now all the children can play nice, and there’s no need to worry, right Abraham?” Emperor Ionius declared, and Father reluctantly agreed. 

The children were herded back towards the gardens, now with Lady Patricia as an escort and guardian. 

Hubert held himself stiffly, and flinched when Beron lightly touched his hand. The prince still wouldn’t look him in the eye, but he held out a fist full of ribbons. 

“Do you want to pick first?” he asked.

Hubert picked yellow, and both of them silently agreed to forget about the fight. 

But when the game started and Marta tried to snatch Edelgard’s purple ribbon from her, Hubert picked the little princess up and ran away with her. After stealing Marta and Beron’s ribbons, Hubert let Edelgard take his. They all agreed it was for the best that she won. 

Things were better after that.

_________________________________________

When Lucille— the last of the Vestra children, just a few months younger than the last prince— was born, Hubert was seven and he considered himself very wise. Father had trusted him with watching after Carmilla and Jonathan with only _one_ maid in attendance, and he was quite proud. So while Mother and Father went about the business of bringing the baby into the world— the mechanics of which he didn’t understand, and no one would answer his questions— Hubert spent the afternoon in the garden with Carmilla, Jonathan, and their pets.

Jonathan had only just been given a cat for his third birthday, a well trained animal that he was told to be careful with at all costs. Pets were how they learned responsibility, Father said, how they learned to care for the needs of others. Jonathan had taken to his cat with great zeal, though he couldn’t pronounce Ophelia’s name for the life of him. He was gentle with the creature, softly petting its downy fur and pulling back when the cat was displeased.

Conversely, while Jonathan and Ophelia sat sweetly in the grass, Carmilla was taunting her cat with a ribbon. They both jumped around wildly. She always had scratches over her arms, but she never complained. Hubert was certain that Benji was the only thing Carmilla didn’t complain about. 

Hubert had far more important things to do than make noises or taunt a pet, though. 

Father had started teaching him magic.

Just small things, thus far. A few wisps of smoke, some sparks of light, breeze enough to blow out candles. The sights were enchanting, though. He blew some small tricks into the air and let Maurice— his dog, an obviously better creature than a cat— nip at his fingers in curiosity. Then he created some more sparks, and Maurice barked. The hound bent down, ready to fight the mysterious light, and Hubert laughed a little. He pet between Maurice’s ears.

“I want to learn magic!” Carmilla called, “I know Father says I’m too little, but I’m not that much littler!”

“More little,” Jonathan corrected as Carmilla flung herself into the grass, and she stuck her tongue out at him. 

“Whatever the word. I’m sure I’d be much better at magic than you, Hubert. If you teach me, I can tutor you and make you better. Like we do with ah-rith-mah-tic.”

“But Father says your too little. I wouldn’t want to disobey him,” Hubert drawled with a roll of his eyes. He didn’t even spare Carmilla a glance as he spoke, too busy making red and green sparks. He wanted to see if Maurice could be trained to sit for the red ones, and to jump for the green ones. It would take more than an afternoon to teach, but Hubert would bet Mother would be proud when she saw. 

Carmilla huffed, but she gave up her wheedling. Saying Father wouldn't like something or he would disagree was always the fastest way to get her to be quiet. Carmilla never did anything that would upset Father. Except for bite Hubert when they were fighting, that was.

“I can learn magic, too?” Jonathan asked.

“When you’re bigger—” Hubert tried to say, but Carmilla cut him off.

“Of course! All the Vestras learn magic. Even Mother had to know magic before she became a Vestra.”

Hubert scowled at Carmilla. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

“‘Course it is! Not all ladies know magic, Lady Patricia doesn’t know magic. Because a queen doesn’t have to, but a Vestra does.”

“Don’t let Father hear you talking about Lady Patricia like that.”

“It wasn’t an insult!” Carmilla yelped, but she hushed.

Still, Hubert supposed she was right. There were just certain things Vestras did, and learning magic was one of them. Father said magic was dangerous, that to wield it took both ‘responsibility and resolve’. It was a gift and a duty wrapped all into one, which was also what Father said about their relationship to the royal family.

_You must protect Lady Edelgard with your life!_

The magic was to protect Their Highnesses and His Majesty, no doubt. But Carmilla and Jonathan wouldn’t inherit House Vestra and they wouldn’t be Minister of the Imperial Household. 

As Carmilla chattered at Jonathan about magic, Hubert fell backwards to stare at the sky. _The new baby_, he thought, _won’t always be a member of House Vestra._ Daughters married others— Mother used to be a Hevring, but nobody cared about that anymore— and spare sons… no one much talked about them. Perhaps Jonathan would learn magic, and then he would be a knight; a magic knight. That would be good for him, that way he could still protect Their Highnesses. But that, Hubert realized, would be a choice Jonathan had to make. 

Conversely, Hubert knew exactly what he would do with his whole life, from start to finish. There were some empty spots to fill in, but for the most part… Minister of the Imperial Household. Marquis Vestra. Servant of House Hresvelg. 

But not Jonathan and not Carmilla. It suddenly seemed a little silly to Hubert that they would have to protect Their Highnesses and learn magic and wear dour colors and be quiet, too. Where would they go, being Vestra to their core but not allowed to be a Vestra?

But before Hubert could open his mouth and question Carmilla about what she thought, a loud noise broke through their quiet afternoon. They all turned to look towards the house.

“Children!” Father’s called from a high window. He was grinning, something he rarely did. “You have a new sister!”

So they did.

_________________________________________

“Hubert?” Beron asked him once, arms full of the frogs they were trying to catch, “Do you think my uncle is scary? You can say whatever you want.”

Similarly covered in mud from head to toe, Hubert could only regard Beron with a wary eye, turning his head this way and that to catch sight of any adults. The prince might give him permission, but Mother and Father were very serious about not insulting any member of the royal family. Even one as tangential as Lord Arundel. 

“Can what I want to say be nothing?”

Beron giggled. “No!”

Hubert stuck out his tongue, and instead of saying, _yes, yes, you’re uncle is terrifying,_ he held out their frog bucket. Beron let it go and dumped their bounty in. But the answer sat heavily between them as they walked back to the summer palace— where Their Highnesses were enjoying the lakes in this hot weather, and Hubert and Carmilla also got to stay as the royal companions. The girls were doing proper princess things like dancing, Hubert was pretty sure. Carmilla had spent all morning complaining about missing out on the frogs.

As the sounds of the triplets’ attempts at swordplay reached their ears, Hubet bit his lip. And then he whispered, “Lord Arundel smiles too much.”

Beron nodded gravely, and Hubert knew he understood.

Lord Arundel was also— though neither of them could quite put their finger on why— entirely too touchy with Beron and Edelgard and little, baby Rolf and Lady Brynhilde, who all had the Crest of Seiros. Hubert dared not mention in Arundel’s hearing that Carmilla had the crest of Cethleann from their mother’s side. But, again… he didn’t know why. Hubert was too old to believe in immutable truths anymore. 

But Lord Arundel being scary might be one of them.

_________________________________________

The stables in the royal palace had beautiful steeds. They were long-haired and full-beared, they came in white, black, tan, red, and multi-colored. There were war horses, show horses, horses that were bred for speed or strength or fearlessness. The wyverns could be heard roaring in the distance, though the children were never allowed near them.

Marta loved horses, so she often dragged Hubert, Beron, El, and Carmilla to the stables. Beron and El were pretty ambivalent to the creatures, while Carmilla maintained that, “They _unnerve_ me. That doesn’t mean I’m scared!” Hubert really couldn’t care less about horses.

But whenever they stole down to the stables, Hubert did like to wander a few hallways away from Marta’s steeds. That’s where they kept the pegasi.

The winged creatures had bigger pens than the rest of the horses, where they could spread comfortably. Hubert had figured that if he very carefully held out a treat for a pegasus, it would flap its wings. He always came down to the stables with an assortment of treats for this reason. 

Once, Hubert was lucky enough to be there when a Falcon Knight was preparing her steed, and he got to watch them take off. The pegagus’s wings had beaten so powerfully, and it flew up so high so quickly. As he watched them hit the clouds, Hubert’s mouth had gaped and he went home with that sight in mind. He dreamed of flying for weeks afterwards, and it was never as scary as climbing trees in his waking hours was.

Carmilla once followed him to the pegasi’s quaters, and she shrunk behind him as he gently rolled an apple towards one of the unicorn pegasi that he wasn’t supposed to feed directly. That horn was dangerous without proper training.

“But, Hubert,” she whispered beseechingly, “you’re scared of heights.”

His only answer was to shrug, and to watch in delight as the pegasus flapped its wings in pleasure and gave a little trot. Carmilla squeaked at the sight and slunk further behind. But when he continued to stare at the pegasus, she grabbed his hand and peeked over his shoulder again, just a little.

“I guess they are kinda pretty,” Carmilla said. “We could ask Mother for lessons, if you want to. She won’t say no to both of us.”

Hubert only shook his head and squeezed Carmilla’s hand. He dragged her out of the stables, where she finally relaxed a little and started yammering about the practicality of carriages. Hubert never did get those lessons, but for his birthday that year, Carmilla and Mother presented him with a beautifully-detailed, little wooden statue of a pegasus. It rested on Hubert’s desk— wherever he went— for the rest of his life.

_________________________________________

Edelgard held out her hands towards Hubert, a firm pout on her lips and determination in her eyes. She had been whining and wheedling for five minutes, and she would not take no for an answer. “Please, please, Hubert! Today’s special, won’t you, please?”

“It’s not your birthday, El. I don’t have to.”

It was Princess Liesl’s birthday, and allegedly all she had wanted was to spend it with Jonathan. So Lady Patricia organized a small party for the girl, set in the throne room with a decent amount of pomp, but amusements enough for little children. Not that the birthday girl and her guest of honor cared. Liesl and Jonathan were now ‘hiding’ under a table with a plate of sweets and some of her dolls.

Everyone else seemed to be enjoying the festivities more than them, as Carmilla badgered Lycaon for spells, and Beron fought with wooden axes with Visna, and Marta tried to act very grown up with Prince Io and Princess Bryn, discussing very grown up things, like board games. Mother and His Majesty had Lucille and Prince Rolf sitting on a table, and they seemed to be trying to get the babies to play. 

Hubert, meanwhile, was getting badgered into dancing. 

But there was a vicious glint of determination in El’s eyes, and she flexed her fingers at him. Hubert’s resolve could not help but crumble before her, even though he knew Carmilla would laugh at his dancing later. 

“Fine,” he muttered, and El cheered.

She grabbed his hand and dragged Hubert into the middle of the throne room, where no one else was dancing even though music wafted through the hall. He was forced to try to grab the side of a girl approximately half his height, while she held his hand nearly a foot above her head in an effort to not make him slouch. It didn’t work.

They wobbled through some steps, the ones El was taught with Beron and Hubert was taught with Carmilla, and Lady Patricia could be heard cooing. Hubert knew his cheeks were painfully red, but El said, “Turn now Hubert!”

And he turned. Gave her a little spin. Forward and back, he let El twirl, and the very serious look on her face faded into a delighted grin. Hubert took his chance to pull El up and onto his feet, so that she stood a little taller. Instead of scolding him for breaking hold, El giggled as she let him grab both of her hands. Now, neither of them were straining or hunched.

Hubert gave a big spin on one foot, and El shrieked in laughter. He grinned. Again and again, he made turns and twists and jumps, and eventually El started commanding he make certain moves. Hubert laughed as she tried so hard to keep her balance, and then El was calling, “Up, up, please, pick me up Hubert!”

He couldn’t quite toss El the way Friedrich tossed Visna around during dances, but Hubert managed to hold El up for about three seconds. There were claps from all sides at their display, and Hubert couldn’t stop grinning long enough to remember how badly Beron was going to tease him. Then they both went tumbling down, laughing all the way.

_________________________________________

Duke Aegir’s son was a loud little boy who was even littler than El. Ferdinand obviously wanted very badly to play with them, but Marta had decreed that he was too young. “Liesl and Jonathan will have fun with you,” she said imperiously, arms crossed and word law. Marta’s word was always law.

Ferdinand didn’t seem to understand this, though. 

“I’ll keep up! I will, I will. I’m faster than Edelgard, and that means I should be able to play with you too!”

Hubert and Beron exchanged looks during Ferdinand’s tantrum, noses scrunched and and eyes disbelieving. Beron mimed gagging, and Hubert snorted. Carmilla bumped shoulders with El, her fists clenching and obviously waiting for the word to go ahead and forcibly place the Aegir boy with the other babies. But El paid her no mind, instead going still and red during the display. Then, she responded to Ferdinand’s challenge by shoving him; not hard, but enough that he hit the grass with a soft _oof_.

“You’re it!” she declared, and then they were off. 

Beron and Carmilla both went running for the apple trees, climbing like a pair of cats. 

Marta disappeared into the hedge-maze that only she could navigate. 

Hubert hung back, tailing El and ready to find her a proper hiding spot if she couldn’t by herself. The last time they’d let her hide alone, she ended up crying in a gardener’s ditch. She was too adventurous for her own good, always looking for spots that bordered on stupidly hard to find and dangerous.

This time, El didn’t look for shelter or for a defensive location to pay tag from, though. She ran out into the middle of the open grass field, and waited. 

“Come and get me, Ferdinand! If you can catch me you can play with the big kids!”

Hubert would swear he actually saw the competition gleaming in Ferdinand’s eyes.

Though Hubert loitered in the middle of the field, Ferdinand only had his sights set on El. They ran around and around in circles, yelling and taunting and giggling at each other. El would sprint a short distance, then turn around to stick her tongue out at Ferdinand before dashing off again, always within his line of sight but just out of his reach. 

Marta, Carmilla, and Beron came out from their hiding spots in order to stand at the edge of the lawn and watch with Hubert. 

Ferdinand deserved a little credit, Hubert reasoned. The baby was fast, just clumsy. He might have actually managed to catch El had he not been continuously tripping over sticks and rocks and hills and his own feet. Carmilla and Beron began to throw the apples they stole from the trees to see if he’d trip over them as well. Which Ferdinand did.

Except right as Ferdinand nearly snatched one of El’s ribbons for the fourth time, he collided with an apple and hit the ground face first. Instead of bouncing back up, this time Ferdinand slowly sat up. And then he began to cry. Loudly. 

He wailed, and El trotted over to look at him. Then she started yelling, as well. 

Hubert dashed towards the pair of babies, and even from a distance he saw how Ferdiand was cradling his hand. He was bleeding, and when Hubert hit his knees in front of Ferdinand he saw that his palm had been cut open. Hubert wiped the blood away.

“Oh!” Hubert cried, “It’s not that bad, you baby!” It was barely a scratch. But Hubert still pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it around Ferdinand’s hand. 

“There. All better now. Stop crying or were going to call you a sore loser.”

Ferdinand was still sniffling. “I’m not,” he wailed, seemingly unable to stop weeping. Hubert shook his head at the display. Ferdiand really should have been playing with Liesl and Jonathan if he was going to cry! He was six, younger than El, but even El hadn’t cried for something so small when she was six. 

Thinking of Jonathan and how he cried quietly whenever he scraped up his knees, Hubert pulled Ferdinand’s hand close again. He kissed the bandaged palm, and said, “There, I kissed it better. You’re healed now!” That always made Jonathan perk up. 

Before Ferdinand could respond or stop crying or do anything more than stare with wide eyes, Hubert was shoved harshly into the grass.

“Lord Ferdinand, are you well?” a loud, harsh voice screamed. 

Carmilla and Beron helped Hubert to his feet, and he turned to see that it was one of Duke Aegir’s _attendants_ for Ferdinand. They all knew that just meant he was a babysitter. Their Highnesses, Hubert, and Carmilla hadn’t needed a chaperone in years. 

The babysitter stood up with Ferdinand, still weepy, gathered in his arms. 

“What nastiness, my lord, what roughhousing, you should have never—” he declared, and then he was walking away with Ferdinand. The baby was crying even as he watched then over his chaperone’s shoulder, but he was rubbing at his eyes with his hand that was covered in Hubert’s handkerchief. 

“Wait! I’m better now,” he cried, but Ferdinand was ignored. 

It was a sad sight. 

“I’ll let you beat me next time, Ferdinand!” El called suddenly. 

They all gave little gasps, but no one gaped wider than the rapidly shrinking form of Ferdinand. He didn’t reply, but he waved his hurt hand at them, suddenly grinning wider than Hubert had thought anyone capable of. Beron groaned at the sight, and Hubert joined him. Carmilla stamped her foot. 

El had decided that Ferdiand would actually be allowed to play with them after lunch. And whatever El said went. 

Despite El’s decision, though, Ferdinand von Aegir never came back to play with them again. It seemed Duke Aegir hadn’t been pleased with his son’s injury, and all the children were punished for it. Hubert and Carmilla were sent home early that day and told to ‘reflect on their negligence in their rooms’. Hubert thought it was stupid. It wasn’t like Feridnand was his responsibility; he wasn’t _El_ or Beron or Marta. He wasn’t even like Jonathan or Lucille! 

But Hubert didn’t argue with the punishment. He and Beron agreed that Ferdinand had gotten the worst outcome, as he was banished to the _nursery_ with little, baby Lord Rolf. Not even Liesl and Jonathan! It was a sad situation, but Ferdiand stayed sequestered away for the rest of his stay in Enbarr. He didn’t visit again until _years_ later, so Their Highnesses, Hubert, Carmilla, and Ferdinand never really became friends.

Not that they minded much, as the five of them played tag together in the royal gardens. El’s promise to Ferdinand to let him beat her and join them was quickly forgotten.

_________________________________________

The day before Hubert’s ninth birthday, Father and Mother took him, Carmilla, Jonathan, and Lucille to the theater. They watched Manuela Casagranda sing, and though people shot concerned looks at little Jonathan and Lucille, all the children were silent and attentive. Carmilla and Hubert agreed that the opera was absolutely beautiful— _don’t you think so, Father?_— but they couldn’t agree on why. Carmilla maintained that, “music is magic, Hubert!”

He just thought that the sets and costumes were pretty. And Hubert always did like the story about the Emperor besting Duke Aegir in a duel for the throne. 

When the sun rose the next day, the family had a big, big breakfast. They had lessons off today, and though Father said they couldn’t go and play with Marta, Beron, and El— though Hubert had begged— the Vestra children elected to make the best of it. A little while before lunch, Mother took Hubert aside to give him his birthday present. It was a spell, one that could be cast around a conversation to make everything muffled so there were no eavesdroppers.

“Though you have to promise never to use it at home.”

“I promise!”

Hubert did not master it before lunch, but Mother promised they would keep working on it together. He gave her a big hug, and then they all went to eat in the garden. Hubert could not focus much on lunch though, despite the fact that everything being served was his favorite. Father was going to take him on an excursion today, after lunch.

Hubert scraffed down his meal without even tasting it, but this did not make lunch go faster. Only after an excruciatingly long time of Hubert practically vibrating in his chair as the rest of the family ate at a more sedate pace, did Father take pity. He heaved a great sigh, and said, “Hubert. Go put on your traveling clothes and place Maurice on a leash.”

Hubert was off. 

Father collected him at the house’s back door, and kept his arm securely wound around Hubert’s shoulder. In response, Hubert kept his grip on Maurice’s leash tight as they walked through the wilds of their property. House Vestra had always lived in Enbarr, as close to the royal family as they could manage. But they were still one of the great noble houses, and their property was large and lush and wet; a far cry from Enbarr proper, seeing as they were on the outskirts of the city.

Hubert, Carmilla, and Jonathan were only allowed to explore so far, but Father led him beyond that point. The trees grew closer together and the nicely kept paths gave way to rocky climbs. Father had to carry Hubert across one stream, while Hubert held Maurice. They hiked for almost an hour, in relative silence at that. But Hubert didn’t mind. He and Father rarely had much to say to one another outside of lessons. They were quiet. They were supposed to be quiet. It was comforting in that familiar sort of way.

Eventually, they reached a particularly dense patch of trees, where the light didn’t shine well. Father halted, and he knelt before Hubert. Then he pulled a knife from inside his cloak.

“Hubert,” Father said, his voice low and serious and… something else. With his free hand, he smooved Hubert’s hair back before pulling away. His face grew stony. “Tell me, my son, what is the duty of House Vestra?”

“To protect the royal family and their household,” Hubert replied, trying very hard not to shift. But he couldn’t help how his fingers twisted the leather of Maurice’s leash behind his back.

“Correct. How do we do that, Hubert?” Father said, and Hubert merely thinned his mouth and looked down. He didn’t know. Knights protected people, but they weren’t knights. They learned magic, but how did they use it? The answer had to be more concrete than holding El’s hand when they walked through crowded rooms or crossed deep streams. 

Father placed his fingers beneath Hubert’s chin and gently lifted his head. They looked into each other’s eyes again, and Father’s face wasn’t reproachful; just odd. Hubert still couldn’t identify what that emotion was.

“We protect the Royal Household,” Father whispered, “by being a friend, a shadow, and a knife for Their Highnesses and His Majesty.”

_A friend, a shadow, a knife,_ Hubert mouthed the words, and nodded along.

“Can you guess what each of those things mean? Any guess, Hubert.”

He twisted his fingers harder, grateful that Maurice seemed to know to sit as deadly still as Father. 

“I’m— I’m Beron’s and El’s and Marta’s friend. So is Carmilla,” Hubert whispered, trying to keep his voice level. He hated guessing, hated saying just anything and hoping it was right. But Father nodded and Hubert had to keep trying. At least he’d gotten the first one right. “A shadow… We always stand behind Their Highnesses.” 

Hubert’s voice grew weaker with each word, but he couldn’t think of anything more to say and was ashamed. He and Carmilla did stand behind the princes and princesses, at all the official functions. Marta and El in their large pink and yellow and red dresses, and then Carmilla in her dark purple gowns, all lined up. Hubert supposed he must have looked like Beron’s shadow, trailing behind him, too tall, too black, too quiet. Beron always said he should speak up more, but Hubert never did. Father and Mother were very proud.

Father nodded again at Hubert’s answer, but he said, “Yes, but there’s more to it,” and Hubert felt shame.

“Being the royal family’s shadow is about standing behind them, yes, but it’s also about loyalty. Never wavering, never leaving, protecting their backs. No one should be able to sneak up on Their Highnesses when you stand behind them, on guard. But there’s also another component.” Father paused to take a deep breath.

“I’m going to need to you to be mature about this, Hubert. You’re nine, now, old enough to start seeing the darkness all around you for yourself. But I need you to be brave, Hubert. Because the darkness is nothing to fear. It is a cloak of protection, a warm embrace, and it is your birthright. Being a shadow of House Hresvelg, House Vestra has always walked in darkness. It is our duty to mirror their sun. It is upon us to carry out all the important tasks that the royal family can’t associate with. Do you understand what I’m trying to say Hubert?”

He didn’t, so he neither shook his head nor nodded. Hubert just looked down again. 

Father didn’t let that last long, as he pulled up his chin again. This time, Hubert shivered when he met Father’s eyes. They looked dead.

“It’s alright if you don’t understand yet, Hubert. I’m going to explain it to you. We… are House Hresvelg’s knife. What do you do with a knife, Hubert?”

“Cut things?”

“Kill people.”

Hubert drew in a sharp gasp, and his fidgeting finally ceased. His fingers went slack on the leash, and Maurice’s let out a low whine of distress. The hound started nudging at his fingers, but Hubert didn’t know how to move anymore. Hubert wasn’t sure he was even thinking at this point.

“What do you think we protect Their Highnesses from, Hubert? It is not ghosts, or scraped knees, or poor decisions. They need protection from killers in the night; bad people with equally long knives hovering over their beds at night. We protect them from greedy nobles, ambitious upstarts who lust for the crown. We guard against scandal and meddling foreigners and liabilities. And you are old enough now to understand… At the end of the stories, the enemy is not simply ‘defeated’ Hubert. They are killed. Executed, slaughtered, murdered. House Hresvelg does that; they are the heroes of the light. But after the opera is over, who do you think cleans the mess? Someone must have culled the people who first incited Derrick Aegir to rebel. That is House Vestra, Hubert. We fight all the battles that don’t get turned into stories. House Hresvelg’s friend, who wields a knife in the shadows. Do you understand a little better now, Hubert?”

Hubert swallowed, and gave a deep, slow nod. Yes, he understood. He understood, just a little bit. They fought all the battles after the curtain fell. They fought all the people who were left after the final battle. That… made sense. Hubert would kill all the enemies that weren’t worth Prince Io’s time, when he was His Majesty and Hubert was Marquis Vestra. Hubert could do that.

Once more, Father ran his fingers through Hubert’s hair. 

“It is not always an easy job, my boy,” Father whispered, and Hubert finally realized what that extra emotion was: sadness. “But it is a worthy one. Are you willing to learn?”

And Hubert said, “Yes.”

Father flipped the knife in his hand, and held out the handle for Hubert. 

“Then for your first lesson, you must kill Maurice.”

A yelp fell from Hubert’s lips, and he took a large step back. He stumbled over the very hound in question, and Maurice bounded to his feet in order sniff at his master’s legs. But Hubert could only spare a quick glance down at his dog before turning back to Father. He mouthed words and tried to make his mind grasp onto any sort of thought. He could not comprehend what had just been asked of him.

“But Maurice isn’t a bad guy!” Hubert suddenly pled, practically choking on his confusion. Tears pricked at his eyes and the fear welled up.

Father shook his head. “Enemies aren’t always bad guys. Sometimes they are… Things are not quite so simple, Hubert.”

“But he’s not an enemy!”

“What Maurice _is_,” Father enunciated, not flinching at Hubert’s arguments or yelling, “is an obstacle. An obstacle to your development, to your ability to do your job. And therefore an obstacle in the way Their Highnesses’ wellbeing. Remember, Hubert, you must protect Their Highnesses with you life. That doesn’t just mean your beating heart, Hubert, that is your _life_ you are giving them. It’s everything. Anything should be cast aside if it is an impediment to your ability to protect the Royal Household. And right now… that is the hound.”

Hubert was crying so hard he couldn’t breathe properly. But Father didn’t really seem to care, as he took the knife and gently wrapped Hubert’s uncooperative fingers around it. Even as he was turned to face Maurice, Hubert’s vision was growing blurry, and he couldn’t properly see through the tears. But Maurice had obviously sensed his distress, because he was wiggling, jumping around a little and barking. He came forward, trying to nuzzle and lick, and Hubert could not allow that.

He wrenched one of his hands from Father’s grasp, and held it out to cast a small display of red sparks. Instantly, Maurice stilled and calmed. He sat down on his haunches and continued to regard Hubert curiously. His little head was tilted. Hubert then had to bring his hand up to his face to wipe his tears away.

“I know it’s hard, Hubert,” Father whispered in his ear, hot breath puffing on Hubert’s neck. “But you must do it.”

And, so, Hubert did.

They buried Maurice in that grove, which Hubert now realized was a graveyard of sorts. There were many animals dead in the ground there. Yet couldn’t find it in himself to be horrified by that fact, or scared of any potential ghosts he awoke from walking over so many graves.

Honestly, Hubert couldn’t find it in himself to cry anymore either. He and Father went home, and Hubert locked himself in his room, and he never cried in front of anyone ever again. The next morning, he got up and noted that neither Carmilla nor Jonathan asked after Maurice. But they didn’t seem to realize why they weren’t supposed to ask. Hubert didn’t bother to enlighten them. Or anyone else.

He didn’t dare tell Beron, because Hubert would be Marquis Vestra one day, Minister of the Imperial Household, as well as a friend, a shadow, a knife. There was no need to tell House Hresvelg about what went on in the dark.

On Carmilla’s ninth birthday, though, she went out with Father and her fat cat, Benji. When she came home, Carmilla simply climbed into Hubert’s bed for the first time in years, and bawled, also for the first time in years. He held her close, and didn’t give any words of consolation, because they were Vestras. And because those words would have been useless.

But as his little sister broke down and put herself back together… Well. Though the feeling passed quickly, Hubert hated Father for the first time in his life.

_________________________________________

Hubert was quite certain that Marta was the traitor. Though she smiled over top her cards with all the sweetness of a baby, she couldn’t hide the satisfaction in her eyes. Marta was lying.

She sat next to Hubert, and he had to turn to watch her flex her neat fan of distractions and failsafes. But Hubert just knew that she had the red card; the one he needed to win. And Marta refused to play it! Instead, Beron and Carmilla were snickering at them, not hiding their nefarious amusement nearly as well as Marta. He would bet that they were conspiring to make him lose.

Overtop their small exchange, Prince Io laughed a little. 

“Marta, you can’t make Hubert squirm all evening. Play your card,” he said, and she dutifully complied.

She placed one down. The card was green, and Hubert sunk deeper into his chair in order to groan.

Beron and El broke into raucous laughter at his display, while Carmilla scolded him.

“Sit up, Hubert, what would Father say about your posture?” 

He fought against the instinct to stick his tongue out at her, conscious of Prince Io sitting right there. Hubert merely sat up and scowled. He threw down another green card and glared at Marta, who giggled daintily behind her hand. She was going to win, because she was a traitor, and _evil_.

But then Prince Io cast down three yellow cards in a row, and the round went around the table before circling back to Marta. Who was decidedly not smiling anymore. 

“You cheated, Io! I know your tricks, you’re not being fair,” Marta hissed at her eldest brother, but he simply grinned.

“Being able to count isn’t a crime, Martie. You taking peaks at Hubert’s cards definitely is, though.” 

El and Beron fell into laughter again, while Carmilla gave a small, scandalized gasp. How she idolized Marta! Had anyone made the accusation but Prince Io, Carmilla would have set them on fire. As it was, she sat quietly, and mournfully watched Marta cast down the red card Hubert had been waiting for all evening.

“Aha!” he cried as he played his winning card, steadfastly ignoring Marta and Beron’s heckling. Hubert grinned up at Prince Io, and caught the heir’s easy wink.

“Congratulations, Lord Hubert! Now, do you all want to play another game?”

“I don’t want to play with you anymore,” Marta snapped, her arms crossed and a bitter scowl on her face.

“Aw, come on. There’s no one else to play with big brother, won’t you humor me? How about this, whoever wins the next round gets a prize.”

“I want a cat!” Edelgard cried suddenly and loudly, the gleam of competition in her eyes. 

But Hubert snapped, “No pets!” at her, and El quickly settled in to pout. Hubert didn’t care though, because he was too busy was paying more mind to Carmilla, who had gone stiff in her chair and wouldn’t look up from the floor. He did see Marta and Beron exchange glances over her head; ignorant of the why, but conscious that something had changed. 

“No pets,” Marta echoed, “and no prizes. The winner gets first dessert pick like always, so congratulations to Hubert. I want you to know that if the raspberry tart is gone after dinner, my retribution will be swift and painful.” Hubert wrinkled his nose. He knew that Marta meant she would request that the kitchen stop serving tiramisu, and her threat was not idle. “But I’m tired of cards. Please, can we play something else?”

“War of Heroes!” El piped up, and she was already gone to retrieve the board game. 

Prince Io laughed. 

“Well, I guess that decides it. Good timing too, Bryn always wins. Maybe now someone else can get a dessert out of War of Heroes.” 

He spoke so casually, but Hubert had grown better at picking out emotions lately. Father was taking him to court sessions and asking him to observe certain nobles. Hubert’s job was to track various expressions and looks, especially lying. They lied a lot. Just like Marta at cards.

Prince Io wasn’t lying, but he was… sad. 

Princess Brynhilde had been gone for weeks, on some trip with Lord Arundel. Crestless Prince Io wasn’t invited along, and being away from his sister seemed to be taking a toll on him. There were deep bruises under his eyes, and his skin was paler than it should be. There was a… stressed and stretched look to Prince Io, despite all his grace. 

Or maybe it was the bickering in court— growing louder and louder— that made him look that way. Prince Io had taken the brunt of the personal attacks Hubert heard levied in court, all of them saying he was influencing His Majesty’s new laws and stuff. They were being astonishingly mean, and Father had been forced to remind Hubert to keep quiet on several occasions when he had wanted to come to the crown prince’s defense.

Perhaps it was both. Hubert hoped Princess Brynhilde and Lord Arundel came home soon, so that they could help Io and put a stop to the mess in court.

El came running back with her board game, though, and Hubert’s thoughts of court and Princess Brynhilde and Lord Arundel were swept away. Marta, after all, was a dirty, cheating traitor, and she could not be allowed to win at all costs. Hubert’s dessert depended on it.

_________________________________________

The Vestra children got to stay over at the palace very rarely. Usually, they were allowed to spend the night with Their Highnesses only as special treats. One might ask that they could stay as a birthday present, or a reward for especially good behaviour. This time was different.

Father was meant to stay over at the palace. He did that on occasion for work, but he usually sent Hubert, Carmilla, and Jonathan— who was now old enough to play with them and Their Highnesses daily— home by carriage alone at those times. But Father was intending to stay in the palace for several days allegedly, and when he had started to gather the children to be sent home, Lord Arundel was the one to lay a hand on Father’s shoulder.

“Honestly, Abraham, let the children stay. They are having so much fun already, and one night of play can’t hurt them.”

“I really don’t think—”

“Abraham. Let the children stay.”

And, though, Father’s face was pinched, when he nodded, Hubert, Carmilla, Jonathan, El, Beron, Marta, and Liesl all let out cheers. They jumped up and down, and Beron took one of Hubert’s hands. They ran away before Father could change his mind. 

Sleepovers were a precious luxury, so they made sure to make the most of it. Though they were not allowed to go where Father, Lord Arundel, His Majesty, Prince Io, and a bunch of others were all in conference, they played tag throughout the entire palace. Marta showed them how to slide down the stairs in a box, and Beron broke out his collection of wooden swords. After Lady Patricia came to collect Liesl and Jonathan for bed, El spearheaded their mission to sneak into the kitchen. There weren’t as many goodies as they’d hoped, but they did find a bag of sugar and a lot of slightly stale bread. Their bounty tasted much better with the knowledge that it was illicit. 

When the night grew really late, the maids separated Marta, El, and Carmilla from Hubert and Beron. They were each sent to separate wings and separate rooms. Hubert and Beron agreed that they got the best deal, because it would only be the two of them sharing a bed as opposed to El, Marta, and Carmilla all sharing. 

After they were cleaned and put into their bed clothes, all the candles in Beron’s room were blown out and they were meant to sleep. But Hubert told Beron to, “Watch this.”

He cast Mother’s muffling spell so that the maids wouldn’t hear them from the hallway. And then he used Fire to relight a candle. Beron was incredibly impressed, screeching in joy at the sight. They laughed and laughed at their successful naughtiness, and then Beron found his jacks. They played jacks, and Hubert showed Beron more spells— none as impressive as Fire, unfortunately— and they traded scary stories they knew. Hubert didn’t think any of Beron’s were terribly scary at all, and tried to temper his as a result. The Animal Graveyard story made Jonathan cry and cry, after all, so Hubert knew it was his trump card that he didn’t have to play. He won their story competition with just a retelling of the Crest of the Beast.

Beron was so frightened of the idea of a crest turning someone into a monster, he dragged himself under the covers of the bed and decided that they were done playing for the night. Hubert was the one who blew out all the candles, and when he was finished, he ducked under the comforter to hide, as well. They had to make sure their heads were covered, to be really, really safe.

Once they were settled, Hubert reached over to grab Beron’s wrist. 

“I’ll protect you,” Hubert whispered, laughing, even as he thought of the pocket knife in his trousers— resting with his other day time clothes next to the window— and of his new fire spell. Despite his light tone— so as to not scare Beron further— he was deadly serious.

Beron seemed to realize this, and rather than be off-put, he turned his hand over to grasp Hubert’s.

“I know,” Beron whispered back. “Do you know that you’re my best friend?”

Hubert hadn’t, but he said, “I know. And you’re my best friend in the whole world, forever and ever.” It was one of those immutable truths Hubert told himself he was too old to believe in.

They went to sleep that night, safe and happy in the knowledge that this was the best day of their lives.

And that was the last time Hubert and Beron ever spent the night together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's all fun and games...


	2. A Shadow

During the Insurrection of the Seven, Hubert was at home. At first, the only thing he noticed was that they were going to visit Their Highnesses less and less often, which Carmilla complained about incessantly. Then they stopped going to the palace all together and the complaints dried up, as they started to realize something was wrong. The servants talked.

There was a rebellion. 

Hubert and Carmilla and Jonathan were quiet, quiet children, and they didn’t tell Lucille, and they didn’t bother Father, and they didn’t ask questions of Mother. There was a rebellion, after all. The Royal Household had never been in more danger. Hubert went to bed each night thinking about how Father must be leaving for long stretches of time in order to kill all the enemies in the shadows. The villains and the obstacles. The rebels, the bad guys.

Servants talked.

Enbarr had fallen. Hubert didn’t know how this could be true, because he lived in Enbarr and everything seemed fine. But he hadn’t exactly left the house in months. For all he knew, the Royal Palace could be on fire, and when that thought occurred to him, he hid in his room and didn’t leave until Mother forced him too. Enbarr had fallen.

Hubert was ten, and that meant he was very grown up, certainly more so than Carmilla, Jonathan, and Lucille. He would be the next Marquis Vestra, and that was why he took it upon himself to ask Mother, “Are they dead?” He tried to not let his voice shake and didn’t manage it. 

“No,” Mother whispered back. “No, Father would never allow that. They’re fine. But… well, Hubert, you should know.”

Lord Arundel had _taken_ El. El and Liesl and Rolf, all the little ones, he had taken them and fled and— Lord Arundel was scary! How had Father let that happen!

Servants talked. Hubert knew that Lord Arundel was the leader of this insurrection, he was dangerous and evil, and _why did he have El?_

Hubert screamed himself hoarse over it, and then he went and busted through the lock on Father’s study and yelled some more.

“Father! Does Lord Arundel really have El? He can’t, he can’t, Father, we must go rescue her!”

“Hubert—”

“Why aren’t we going to rescue El? You know, you know that Lord Arundel is so awful with Rolf, we have to go to Fhirdiad now!”

“Hubert—”

“Why hasn’t His Majesty demanded them back? Won’t the Faerghus king help them? El’s smart, she knows that her uncle is dangerous, she’s trying to get home! I know it!”

“_Hubert—_”

“I can help, Father! I have to protect her, I have to! We can go together—”

“_Hubert!_” Father boomed, louder than Hubert had ever heard him speak. Father’s eyes were… dark. And angry. “Get out, Hubert. Now.”

He did, running straight to Carmilla, to Mother, to the butler, to the cook, anyone who might have answers.

Servants talked.

Father was a member of the insurrection.

_________________________________________

Four days in the wild was not what the stories made it sound like. Hubert was cold and hungry and dirty. He’d never been so continuously frightened in his life, ducking behind every rock, scaling random trees, hiding his tracks like some sort of animal. But there were soldiers after him. Not just any soldiers, _rebel soldiers_. The weren’t the knights that helped them play hide and seek, these weren’t the men and women who Hubert knew would help him protect Their Highnesses. These were traitors. Murderers. Enemies. Obstacles.

They were to be removed, because he was a Vestra and they were a problem between him and protecting his princess. El. And also Liesl and Rolf. They must be so scared. No matter how frightened Hubert was, it didn’t matter because El must be so much more terrified. 

Away from Beron and Marta! Sundered from the triplets, out of Visna’s protective wings. No one knew where Io and Bryn were. But Hubert couldn’t remind himself of that, because whenever he did, he wanted to break down. And he couldn’t. He wouldn't let himself cry over this, he just had to _fix it_.

He didn’t even get close to Fhridiad, though. The ruffians, the traitors, the treasonous wretches apprehended him before he even got near the border. Not that Hubert didn’t give them a fight.

He cast fire after fire, bit like Carmilla, scratched and hit and kicked, and they had to tie him up from head to toe. Even bound, Hubert screamed. He cursed them and hollered when the words failed him, scratching up his throat in the process. But he didn’t stop yelling, yelling, yelling, louder than he had ever been in his quiet life. 

One of the soldiers eventually thought to shut him up, despite their orders not to harm him. With the back of his big, gauntleted hand, the ruffian struck Hubert across the face. Hubert could only gasp and bite back tears as they laughed at him finally going quiet. He was too shocked to say anything. No one had ever hit him like that. 

They gagged him during his stunned haze, and that was how they delivered him to Mother and Father.

Mother threw a fit at the sight of him, demanded the soldiers’ heads for what they did to him. Father raged, as well, hissing at his own thugs. Scolding them for hurting children. As if he had any reason to think himself above them. 

And as Mother healed his face with her Faith, Father smooved Hubert’s hair back and asked if he was okay.

Hubert’s throat was too sore and bloody to reply, even if he wanted to. He didn’t.

Instead, he stared back at Father with more hatred than Hubert had ever felt for anything in his entire life. He intended to impart every ounce of his accusation onto Father with his eyes alone. _You’re killing them,_ Hubert said, _you’re killing them, you’ve abandoned El. And I’ll never forgive you for it._

_________________________________________

His forehead was going to scar. Though Mother pinched her lips and tried, tried to heal the gash the soldier’s gauntlet had left, it was going to scar. Hubert couldn’t really bring himself to care, too busy squirming and shaking and trying to sit still for Mother to think about something as frivolous as scars. Friedrich had a scar, right on his shoulder. It was really manly and brave and awe-inspiring, Beron said so.

Hubert could say he got the scar trying to protect El, and Liesl would probably ask to see it when she came home and—

Hubert gave a loud huff and batted Mother’s hands away. 

“How could you let this happen?” he croaked around his sore throat, tired of being quiet and polite for her attentive hands. 

Mother just sighed and folded her hands in her lap. She was so, so— Perfect! Hubert— scrubbed clean but still filthy and bone-tired and shaking with emotion— wanted to scream. But while Lady Patricia and El, Liesl, and Rolf had been spirited away, Mother was perfectly calm, perfectly composed, perfectly… Well, not happy. But at ease.

She had always been like that, put together and well-mannered in the face of anything. Hubert used to admire that. He and Carmilla had thought their mother was so special, with her secret smiles and carefully worded insults. Hubert had wanted to be like that, clever and reserved like that. 

But the world had just ended, Father had— Father had betrayed _all of them_. And Mother wouldn’t flinch. Hubert didn’t know how she did it, and it made him angry.

“I really don’t see how I had any role in any of this, Hubert. I could hardly stop a rebellion on my own.”

Ha! Father consulted Mother about everything. She was Lady Patricia’s confidant, she had her cousin, Lord Hevring’s ear. Mother attended the Officer’s Academy and knew magic and got away with calling Countess Winifred von Bergliez a fool to her face. If there was any woman well-connected and capable enough to stop a rebellion, it was Hubert’s mother.

His mother and father could do anything. And they had let this happen. 

_El_… abandoned in Fhirdiad with Lord Arundel.

Hubert glared at Mother, something he never would have done even a week ago. Glaring at his mother! Yelling at Father, kicking at the servants, throwing a tantrum like Rolf! Never had Hubert considered such things possibilities in his life, let alone something he could physically do and get away with. And yet, Mother just closed her eyes for a second at his look.

She ran her hand over his forehead again, just trying to soothe him rather than healing. It didn’t work.

“My sweet… I know this is all very scary-”

“I’m not _scared._”

“Hush.” He hushed. “No matter what you feel about certain events, there’s more going on than you understand. Do you really think your father would let anything so awful come to pass. Really, not so much has changed. You’ll be able to play with Lord Beron again soon.”

Hubert held his tongue, rather than spitting the bad word that Visna taught them then made them swear never to say. Using foul language might be pushing his luck too far. But despite his stony silence, Hubert knew a lie when he heard one.

“I’m not a child,” he snapped. “That might work on Carmilla, but I’m not stupid. Father has betrayed House Hresvelg. ‘A thousand years of service’, that’s what he said, and now, and now—” Hubert couldn’t even finish the sentence. None of this made sense!

Mother’s lips turned down minutely.

“‘Betrayal’ is a strong word. And only from a certain perspective.”

This time, Hubert openly scoffed and sneered. 

“What perspective?”

“Hubert,” Mother sighed again, and he knew he was trying her. It made something uncomfortable pang in his chest, but there was also a sick rush of victory in seeing the furl of her brow. “Your father has his reasons. _I_ have my reasons.”

“And?” Hubert muttered, pulling his knees up to his chest and staring his mother down. “What are they? What do I not know that makes all of this okay!”

Mother looked… sad, for just a moment. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. Then Mother gently reached forward and placed a kiss on Hubert’s forehead, right where his new scar would rest. When she pulled back, her face was perfect again.

“Hubert… my son, my sweet, you are so clever. So smart, but you use that intelligence of yours like a weapon, a bludgeon. You should be using your head to understand people, not master them. You should be looking at yourself, rather than evaluating others. You’re also ten.”

“Almost eleven,” Hubert whined, though he wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.”

“Your father has his reasons, Hubert,” Mother continued, and her eyes narrowed gravely. “And no matter what they are, no matter what you believe is right, Marquis Vestra _does not_ owe you those reasons. Just worry about being ten, then eleven, then twelve for a little while longer. Keep sharpening that clever mind of yours. And improve your aim a little before you go around slaying everyone you think guilty of evil doing. Can you do that for me, Hubert?”

He said nothing. Instead, Hubert merely stared at his mother just like he had his father a few nights ago, betrayal written all over his face.

_________________________________________

Two months after his attempt to flee Enbarr, Father called Hubert, Carmilla, Jonathan, and Lucille into his office. Hubert had been locked in his room— away from servants with rumors, away from his siblings, away from Father, away from the world and anything ‘dangerous’— since then. Despite his near isolation, he had still found ways to get information. There were such stupid little trinkets in his room, and Mother couldn’t bring his meals every time. The servants liked the gifts. They repaid him in knowledge.

Thus, it did not come as a surprise when Father explained the nature of the ‘insurrection’— _rebellion, betrayal, treason_— to his children, and that it had been successful. His Majesty was now under house arrest, ‘for his own good’. Prince Ionius and Princess Brynhilde were being kept under similar conditions, well cared for and attended to, just away from the public. Edelgard, Liesl, and Rolf were all safe with their mother and uncle, on a holiday of sorts. The triplets, Visna, Marta, and Beron were happy in the palace, with their Father and caretakers. 

“We can go visit them, if you want.” 

Hubert scoffed, but the noise was lost under the sound of Carmilla, Jonathan, and Lucille all heartily agreeing. He did not drag his feet as they were readied for the excursion, though. He could not give up this opportunity. El, Liesl, and Rolf, Io and Bryn, they were still unaccounted for— because Father’s word meant nothing— but the rest of Their Highnesses were still important. Marta and Beron were still important. 

Once they were shuffled into a carriage, Hubert made sure to slouch and scowl and do all the things his etiquette lessons said he shouldn’t. It was a small, pointless rebellion, because Father was riding outside, but it made Hubert feel slightly better. As Jonathan situated Lucille, though, Carmilla pinched him for it.

“Stop sulking,” she scolded. “You need to stop causing trouble for the rest of us. If you hadn’t run off we would have been able to visit sooner, you know.”

“Do you really believe that?” Hubert snapped.

“Of course! Honestly, Hubert, pull yourself together. You aren’t still upset about El, are you? Father said that she’s fine. So there’s no need to worry.” Carmilla said this like it was comforting.

But all Hubert could hear was a faint buzzing in his ears. He almost felt like his world was sliding into the sea, each pillar collapsing one after another. Because he’d suddenly realized that he couldn’t trust Carmilla.

His sister always did what Father wanted. Which meant that she was as much one of them as Father was. As Mother was. As Lord Arundel and Lady Patricia and the Prime Minister and everyone else was. 

Hubert didn’t cry. But he really wanted to.

_________________________________________

Beron fell into Hubert’s arms within seconds of being reunited with one another. And then Beron sobbed. Hubert had never seen him cry.

“Why’d you do it?” he wailed, and Hubert wanted to melt into a puddle. But his anger was stronger than his shame, and it burned away any tears that wanted to fall. Instead, he just grabbed onto Beron and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Hubert repeated, over and over again, and his voice grew tight and raw as he spoke. He’d been screaming in his room during his captivity, and not even Mother’s healing had managed to heal Hubert’s throat properly before he went back to shrieking his displeasure. Being able to haunt his father with his voice felt like his only real weapon at present, and Hubert had no desire to stop.

“I tried,” he gasped, squeezing tighter, “I tried to go get El, but I couldn’t— I wasn’t strong enough, I’m not strong enough, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Forgive me!”

Beron hiccuped and cried harder. 

Hubert held him, growing silent because of the effort it was taking to hold back tears, or maybe to hold back more screaming. He couldn’t really tell. Beron, conversely, seemed to have no fight in him. He just hung limply in Hubert’s grasp and cried life a baby rather than a twelve-year-old. But Hubert couldn’t blame him. 

Lady Patricia was gone, His Majesty was confined to his rooms, Prince Io and Princess Bryn were missing; these past few months, Beron must have been so alone.

But Beron still had Hubert. 

If Hubert had possessed someone to protect him— _can’t trust Father, can’t trust Father, Mother’s complicit_— he might have just broken down too. But as it stood, Beron had Hubert, and it was Hubert’s job to protect him. Father had not just failed; he was an enemy of House Hresvelg. As far as Hubert was concerned, the man had already forfeited his position as the Head of House Vestra. That left all the duties on Hubert.

When Beron finally finished crying, he pulled back and solemnly asked Hubert, “Did you really try to rescue El and Liesl and Rolf?”

“I’ll do it again,” Hubert swore, and he knew he was snarling and gnashing his teeth. Beron flinched at the display, but his fingers also tightened their grip on Hubert’s shirt sleeves.

“No,” he said, “Stay here, please.”

And Hubert could do nothing but nod and agree. He had never seen such relief in anyone’s eyes; it was almost scary. But Hubert was still stinging from Carmilla’s betrayal, and he understood how badly Beron must want someone to trust right now.

So, he just gathered Beron back up into is arms, and vowed that if Their Highnesses could trust no one else in the world, they could trust Hubert von Vestra.

_________________________________________

Where once their domain was all the royal grounds, now the children of House Hresvelg were confined to one ‘playroom’. It was a large room, one without windows and in the lower levels of the palace, underground, and it didn’t lack amenities. There were board games and cards and tacks and dolls and books. There was plenty enough room to run around, and comfortable chairs and a large table. Hubert could not really find anything to complain about in regards to the decoration of their new prison; Beron did like to whine about their wooden weapons being confiscated, though.

The triplets— who had never seemed to want to play with anyone but each other— were especially indignant about the whole thing. 

Friedrich said sixteen was far too old to be confined with such amusements.

Wilhelm barked that their training was being threatened.

Lycaon bemoaned that they were stuck spending all their free time with children.

At the start, Princess Visna would snap at her brothers for their whining, telling them to be serious, to be cautious, and to be kind. But as the months droned on, the triplets grew increasingly angry at the situation and Visna grew more and more drawn. Beron said Visna had some special appointments that she went to every morning and every evening. No one knew what went on there, and she wasn't telling. But Marta swore up and down that there were all these awful marks on Visna’s arms.

As for Hubert, he had never felt more useless in his life. Every day they were marched from one cell to another, and only the barest sense of normality kept the charade together. The farce was sending the Hresvelg and Vestra children insane, their tongues trapped and their hands tied. Hubert hadn’t ever felt so restrained, not even gagged and bound and dragged back to his father. Carmilla wasn’t much better, but she certainly tried her hardest to justify the situation.

‘Father says it’s dangerous’, ‘Father says everyone’s fine’, ‘Father says it’s for Lady Visna’s health’.

Marta nearly hit Carmilla for that one. The princess could barely stand to sit with Hubert, Beron, and Carmilla anymore, too busy trying to coax life into Visna’s eyes and make her eat. 

They were also all feeling El’s absence.

Marta, Beron, Hubert, El, and Carmilla. For years that had been their small group, even if sometimes El felt too young or Marta too old. Now there was no one to curb Marta’s tongue, or glare at Beron for naughtiness, or someone for Hubert to baby, or Carmilla to give her wisdom to. Instead, they were tearing apart at the seams. Hubert and Carmilla couldn’t stop yelling at each other, and Marta saw no reason to babysit children over ten, and Beron kept getting quieter. 

Similarly, poor Jonathan and Lucille spent everyday entertaining themselves, as they were so much younger than all the royal children present. They were missing Liesl and Rolf dearly, and it wasn’t odd to find Jonathan crying silently to himself in a corner. Hubert was almost proud, but mostly just angry that a baby like Jonathan could see how wrong everything was better than Carmilla. She was supposed to El’s best friend.

But Edelgard, Liesl, and Rolf were gone, and no matter how much Friedrich begged that they be brought home, it fell on deaf ears. All their words fell on deaf ears, and silent mouths. The maids were mute, the manservants had apparently taken a vow of silence, the tutors repeated the same droning lessons, and His Majesty… He seemed too guilt ridden to bare looking at his children, let alone speak to them. The worst was Duke Aegir, though, with his simpering smiles and infantilizing reassurances. 

Hubert knew that the hole he was trying to stare into the man’s vile head was felt, because Father had been consulted about it. Father scolded him, but everything Father said went in one of Hubert’s ears and out the other these days, so it didn’t stick. Instead, Hubert kept fixing his gaze on the Prime Minister, trying to be unsettling as possible. 

He and Marta even made something of a game of it. When Duke Aegir came in the ‘playroom’, the princess and Hubert would lock onto that balding head and glare, trying to see who could make him flinch first. Some months into this endeavor, Duke Aegir stopped being able to meet Hubert’s eyes. It was a small victory, but one he held onto tightly.

The first visit the Prime Minister made to the royal and Vestra children after they realized that the man was now scared of Hubert— which made Beron really laugh for the first time in a long time— they were prepared. Marta sat to the left, Hubert the right. Lucille, Jonathan, and the triplets were easily persuaded into adopting equally blank stares. With Beron as their leader, they glared down the Prime Minister. He was assaulted from all sides.

“There is perhaps no easy way to tell you this,” Duke Aegir said, as Hubert gleefully watched him squirm and sweat. Maybe if they were unnerving enough, he’d never come back here. “But these things do happen. Truly, truly terrible, but you must know, everything was tried to prevent this.”

He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief, and Wilhelm was cracking up. His smile couldn’t quite be contained, even as Lycaon shoved him. Carmilla pinched Hubert, and he didn’t have to look at her to know how disapproving she was. Father said Duke Aegir deserved respect after all. Hubert thought Aegir deserved a blast of fire to the mouth. 

“The Goddess, in her wisdom, makes capricious choices, but that does not make them wrong. I implore you to remember that, and to call upon your faith and trust at this time—”

“Get to the point, Duke Aegir,” Visna snapped. Where once her voice was dynamic and echoing, it now sounded frail. She was pale as a ghost and couldn’t rise from her chair, but Duke Aegir flinched at her command all the same.

“Yes, yes, I… We have just received word. Prince Ionius is dead.”

Everyone’s faces dropped and their game ended. And that’s when the screaming started.

_________________________________________

There was a funeral. The Vestras dressed all in black and for once they didn’t seem out of place. They stood behind the royal family, and it was exactly where they were supposed to be. His Majesty had left his room for the occasion, and Princess Byrnhilde was back. There were flowers enough to drown in, beautiful laments galore, and everyone was given the day off of work. Because of that, all of Enbarr might have actually been at the funeral.

Duke Aegir and Count Varly and Father gave speeches. They spoke about Prince Ionius all day, saying that he was brave, that he was just, that he was good and dedicated to his people. They said he was sick, sick, sick, and had been for a long time, valiantly fighting through his illness for as long as he could.

They didn’t say that Io could count cards. They didn’t mention that he was murdered.

Four months later, Princess Visna ‘quietly passed in her sleep from grief’. 

There was no grand funeral for her.

_________________________________________

“Bryn screams every night,” Beron whispered to Hubert in the safety of their little fort. They were too old to be building forts of blankets and pillows, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Hubert cast his sound muffling spell, and Beron broke down.

“It’s only at night, but as soon as everyone starts going to sleep, she starts up. Not that I blame her.” Beron scratched at his arm. Every single shirt he owned was ruined because he couldn’t stop clawing at his sleeves. “Wilhelm won’t talk about it, but Friedrich says the sessions are all really painful. They just get… get strapped down. And then the blood and potions and stuff goes in and… they wait. It’s been what, a year and change? Since everything went to hell. I’d scream too if I’d been strapped down that long.”

Beron was lying and Hubert knew it, because it _had_ been a year and a half since they’d all been caught and caged. And Beron didn’t scream, he just grew quieter and his eyes got larger and more watery. Hubert would comment on the exhaustion that clung to Beron, how his limbs were too small because he wasn’t eating; but they all looked like that. The royal children were having the life drained out of them, and Hubert felt like he was dying right alongside them. The symptoms weren’t quite so prominent in him, but he wasn’t sleeping or eating right either.

Carmilla, conversely, would never dare look anything but fine. She ate and slept and talked to Father, and pretended everything was fine. Who knew all of House Hresvelg had such an awful illness? It was for the best that the healers came, and that Father and Duke Aegir had taken the reigns of the Empire. Their Highnesses and His Majesty needed to rest.

Hubert couldn’t even bear to speak to her anymore.

“I’m lucky,” Beron whispered, and Hubert wanted to hit him for saying such a thing. But he couldn’t even refute the claim, because no matter how much blood they drained from Beron’s body, he actually was the lucky one. “I’m worried about Marta.”

Marta didn’t have a crest, not like Beron. One day, after they were through with the triplets, they might strap Marta down and pump her with blood and magic until one appeared. They might try and try, defiling her body for their own ends, until she was either dead like Io or ruined like Bryn. Or maybe, Beron would be like Bryn. The sibling with a crest and too much love and too little blood and all the luck, screaming at night for the one they lost. No… Beron didn’t scream. Maybe he’d waste away like Visna. Maybe he’d go mute like Lycaon. 

Maybe Hubert would be the one who went insane from screaming, because while he couldn’t look at Carmilla anymore, Father had not been spared his wrath.

_Io’s blood is on your hands, Io’s blood is on your hands, Io’s blood is on your hands!_

Father never responded, but Hubert didn’t need him too. He needed Father to think he was irrational and stupid and loud, loud, loud. Because Hubert was quiet, and he was a Vestra. 

He took Beron’s hand and squeezed. 

“Don’t worry about Marta. I’ll handle it.”

There was far, far more faith in Beron’s eyes than Hubert really thought he deserved.

_________________________________________

At fourteen, Princess Marta von Hresvelg was not the girl Hubert had grown up with. She wasn’t that much taller than him these days, for one, and she didn’t seem as invincible as she once did. Gone was the image of the girl with a silver tongue who could wheedle their way out of anything. Her immovable, haughty smiles were replaced with pinched lips, and her eyes didn’t dance anymore. No longer was she their leader.

More often than not these days, Marta was nursing her brothers or attending to Brynhilde, rather than taunting, teasing, teaching or even looking at Carmilla and Hubert. She was trying to staunch gaping wounds— emotional and physical— everyday, and the responsibility had stripped away the lighthearted playfulness that had once characterized Marta von Hresvelg. While Bryn screamed, while Lycaon withdrew, while Friedrich fought, while Wilhelm broke, Marta held stoic and kept on working. She’d entrusted Beron to Hubert in the meanwhile, which was not a responsibility he took lightly. But Hubert also knew that Beron was only part of his duty.

He brought calming herbs from home, and made peace with Carmilla long enough to have her come to the palace some days. While he left her and Beron to play a lifeless game of cards, Hubert walked three steps behind Marta and followed her orders. 

_Collect extra bandages from the outside world, ask after Uncle Volkhardt’s recent movements and the children, talk with Friedrich while I sit with Bryn._

Hubert’s crowning achievement was slipping Marta a secret birthday gift. The dagger was their little secret, and though Marta had turned her nose up at the steel at first— “Really, Hubert? Really?”— Beron reported that she slept with the little protection under her pillow. It wasn’t enough, but it had to mean something.

Marta’s efforts weren’t enough either, though, and Wilhelm succumbed next. He wasn’t dead. Just ‘crippled’. But it meant that Wilhelm was no longer viable for their experiments, and next down the line from the triplets… was Marta. 

It was Hubert’s job to protect Their Highnesses with his life, and while he had failed thus far… This time he was a little more prepared.

He’d planned. A little coin to the right people here, a mapped route there, some stocked supplies. Hubert had a journal tucked under a floorboard he’d pried apart where he had detailed exactly how a fugitive might travel from Enbarr to Fhridiad. Getting everything he’d needed hadn’t been easy, as he had to use one of the servants— Sara— as his proxy in most things. Hubert was still being kept under lock and key by Father, after all. Bedroom to dining room to carriage to palace to the ever vigilant and guarded Vestra Estate. He was a flight risk. 

Which wasn’t an unfair assumption. But Hubert wouldn’t be the runner this time.

After Wilhelm’s condition was announced, Hubert laid up all night, already aware of what he must do. The next day he gathered up his maps and plans before going down to breakfast. Then, once they were sequestered in the playroom, he grabbed Marta and Beron, and told him his plan. 

It probably said something nasty about their present situation that they didn’t protest such a risky scheme. Beron had grinned at the plan, a shadow of is old smiles but a welcome sight. Marta simply said nothing, defeat in her eyes. But she didn’t fight. All Hubert had to promise her was, “I’m going to get you to El, Liesl, and Rolf,” and she complied. The potential accusations— _You want me to abandon Beron, the triplets, Father!_— hung in the air. But Marta was too selfish to voice it, too scared. She would take any chance she could of escaping whatever went on when they strapped the royal children down. Beron just didn’t care anymore.

There was also the thin hope that maybe if they found Lady Patricia and asked the Holy Kingdom for aid, they would help. All those knights, honorable and good and brave… if only they knew what went on the Empire’s palace. Help would come then. Surely.

It was a resoundly simply plan. Getting out of the palace would be the easiest part. Next to the western garden, there was a window that El had broken the hinge off of with a ball in what felt like another lifetime. They’d never told anyone, and now all of them could pry it open with ease. The garden gate that the servants used was meant to be all but sealed, except for on days when the palace was receiving great deliveries. But commoners would give up almost anything for gold enough to feed their children, and a door key was trivial. Hubert had acquired it months ago.

Then Hubert planned guide Marta to a specific inn, where a servant would have already booked them a room and left two travel packs and some commoner clothes. They’d leave the city the night, hopefully before the alarm had been sounded. Hubert reckoned that they had until his father came to bring him home before anyone even realized they were gone. Then the hard part started. 

Hubert knew now that they couldn’t survive the wild easily. Their best odds were on slipping out the city gates and then arriving at the closest village as soon as possible. They’d buy horses, and then it would be a race to the border. 

But to manage that, they needed money, first and foremost, and their supplies. Hubert needed another night to prepare. 

So, he went home, ready to not sleep at all. Break into the family safe, have Sara set up the inn room for them, collect his maps and potions and a weapon. All of it had to be done quickly and quietly. But Hubert knew he could do it. He had to.

And then he opened the door to his room, and Father smirked back at him.

“You know,” he said, holding up the journal that Hubert had planned the whole enterprise in, “I’m actually impressed.”

Father stood, and though every fiber in Hubert’s body suddenly felt like it was on fire and screaming at him to _run_, he didn’t move from the doorway. Father gently reached past him to shut the door with a soft click. 

“This little scheme of yours is almost viable, if a little naive. I’d recommend finding work with some merchants honestly. Even with a head-start, two children can’t outrun the royal guard. Better to hide in plain sight. Though, I will commend you for this route you’ve mapped. Cleverly practical and unpredictable. But really, Hubert… it’s obvious you’ve never left the city without an escort.”

Father turned, and when his looming presence retreated, Hubert could breathe again. He was shaking and gasping, fists clenching rhythmically as Father stopped beside the fireplace. He reached into Hubert’s journal to grip at several pages, and then he pulled.

“You need to proper papers to enter and leave Enbarr.”

All his plans were tossed into the fire.

“No!” Hubert yelled, and dashed forward. He didn’t know what he was planning to do, only aware of the fact that every inch of him was quivering with rage, that there were tears gathering in his eyes, that as his papers burned, so did his last shred of hope. 

Hubert didn’t manage to hit his father.

Instead, Father whirled around, more fury in his eyes than Hubert had ever seen. And then Hubert was looking at the floor.

His father… had _struck_ him.

It didn’t hurt quite so badly as when the soldier had introduced several pounds of metal to his temple, but shock that the blow had even come sent Hubert reeling this time. He could barely focus his eyes when Father hauled him up by his shirt to look Hubert in the eyes. 

“You’re a stupid, rash little boy. You think you’re very clever, don’t you? You would’ve been caught within hours!”

He was thrown, and Hubert fell like a limp doll onto his bed. 

“And then what would have happened!” Father screamed, the only time Hubert had ever heard the man raise his voice like that. “Lady Marta would be _exactly_ where she started. Where she’s supposed to be. And _you_… you, Hubert, would be dead. A dangerous, stupid, little liability, snuffed out at once. Do you think they would have let you mop up Lady Marta and Lord Beron’s tears after that? Oh, it was just one little attempt to run away with the imperial princess, nothing too big. You would have been drawn and quartered! Your head cut off and displayed for treason! And the princess you thought you were saving? Locked in a veritable prison cell, with no freedoms, no dangerous amenities. You really are a stupid child.”

Father laughed. 

“So much so, that I’m honestly disappointed.”

He left, and Hubert was locked in his room. He didn’t scream, though a part of Hubert really, really wanted too. Instead, he wept. Hubert slid to the floor and cried quietly until he passed out; helpless, and hopeless, and lost. 

To further complete his humiliation, Father personally dressed and escorted Hubert to the royal palace the next day. His defeat had hollowed the boy’s eyes and there was a new disgusting purple bruise marring half his face; Marta and Beron didn’t even have to ask.

There really was no escaping this fate. 

The next day, they took Marta down to the laboratory and she screamed for hours.

_________________________________________

“I had honestly thought to spare you from this,” Father said, voice clear but trembling with some barely restrained emotion. “But if you are so thoroughly determined to be… _of use_. You might as well learn something, and not bumble your way through it. Who knows, you might find some purpose and perspective, grow up a little and stop this pointless little rebellion of yours.”

The look Hubert leveled at his Father was not quite a glare. Oh, it was a look of disdain and hatred, but there were no intense emotions behind it. 

Marta’s skin grew greyer by the day, and Prince Lycaon was dead. Hubert had nothing left to give Father, not when all his grief and indignation and care went to Their Highnesses. 

There was no point in fighting Father, so there was no point in making a display for him.

At his son’s muteness, Father heaved a sigh. Then he rested a hand on Hubert’s shoulder and guided him. Down, down they went, to the part of the Vestra Estate that Hubert, Carmilla, Jonathan, and Lucille used to make up stories about: the cellars, which were huge and dark. They weren’t allowed down there, but the children had done some rudimentary exploring. In recent years, Hubert had put together that there were dungeons down there. 

This was where all of House Hresvelg’s more private enemies disappeared. 

The further they walked, the more blood caked the walls and floors. Hubert had grown used to blood. He’d wailed when he and Beron had hit El when they were children, sure that blood meant she was dying. But now… the hound had bleed far more than Hubert had anticipated, all that stickiness dripping down his fingers and onto his shoes when he slaughtered Maurice. Hubert had patched a lot of small cuts over the years too, whether it was Lucille’s skinned knees or Liesl’s papercuts or the gashes in Beron’s arms. Their Highnesses had reeked of blood for years now, it clung to them.

Hubert wasn’t scared of death. He’d been prepared to give his life since he was a toddler; at least, in theory. He’d seen Visna’s icy corpse all laid out, and Brynhilde, the very image of living death. Hubert had killed; bugs, and a gamebird, and an innocent hound. Almost daily and for years now, he’d imagined viciously gutting that ‘healer’ clad in black from head to toe that came to take the royal children away for their sessions.

When Father slipped a dagger into Hubert’s hand and placed him in front of the gaunt prisoner who had been tortured beneath his baby sister’s room, he wasn’t surprised.

“Who is he?” Hubert asked, as the man stared at him with large eyes. They were… different from an animal’s. The whites of those eyes were a vicious reminder that a man hung before him. There was less reflection in the eye’s of a human as well, more depths there, more color, and… understanding. No trust, just comprehension.

“Does it matter?” Father asked, and Hubert supposed it didn’t. A few weeks ago, it might have. But the servants who knew what was happening the royal children— who knew that horror, who knew their duty, who could have helped— had given him up to Father. Carmilla wouldn’t go to the palace anymore, lest she be forced to see the truth. Lady Patricia had stopped writing to her children. No one even cared that Lycaon was dead, because they hadn’t made a holiday out of his murder.

Hubert couldn't find it in him to care much about anyone anymore. _Guilty, guilty, guilty,_ he thought as he stared at total strangers. All of them were guilty, were complicit in this farce. The nobles and their violent self-importance, the commoners and their willful ignorance, the church and their righteous exploitation. 

They’d all played a role in murdering Io, Visna, and Lycaon; in breaking Brynhilde and Wilhelm; in caging Marta and Beron; in stealing El, Liesl, and Rolf. 

Hubert would forgive none of them.

He didn’t know who this man was, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was proving to Father that he could follow orders long enough to be allowed to see Beron and Marta again. Hubert raised the knife and walked forward.

“How _old_ are you, boy?” the man chained to the wall asked, horror writ all over his face.

“Thirteen,” Hubert replied.

The man heaved a sigh and shook his head. “I knew you Vestras were sick, but this is too much. Have you ever killed anyone before, boy?”

“No.” 

“Well then, take some free advice. If you want to do me one last favor, hit deep and hard on my jugular. It makes the head stop working faster than anything else, redirecting all that blood to the floor.”

Hubert was breathing faster now, too fast. But his hand wasn’t shaking when he raised the knife.

“Thank you,” he rasped. “What is your name?”

“Aw, kid,” the man laughed, one last broken chuckle that seemed to have been surprised from him. “You don’t need to know that.”

The knife came down, deep and fast; so much so that his neck was almost in two pieces and Hubert had felt the steel scrap across bone.

Hubert supposed he didn’t need to know this man’s name. But he would always remember his face.

_________________________________________

They took Beron. They strapped him down and replaced all the blood they had stolen from him with potions and someone else’s blood. He didn’t scream, he just cried and muttered to himself and the last few pieces that had been keeping Beron together started disintegrating.

Hubert had been expecting this.

Expecting it, though… Oddly enough… it didn’t make what was happening any easier to bear.

Hubert started screaming again for the first time since their failed escape attempt, and he screamed and screamed as Beron broke, if just to give the prince a voice. 

He could only see Beron and Marta every few weeks now, because ‘Their Highnesses are busy, and you have studies to attend to, and honestly, you’re all a bit old to be having playdates everyday.’ It made watching the changes in them more startling. Their faces grew gaunter, they skin more shallow, and Beron was always bleeding because he couldn’t stop scratching at his scars and open wounds. His hair was _graying._

It made Hubert angrier than anything ever had before, and on more than one night he stood outside Mother and Father’s room, gripping that knife too tightly.

He never got farther than that, even as Beron had the life drained from him. Hubert knew— knew so much better now after his short sighted little plan had failed spectacularly and their hope died— that killing Father wouldn't fix anything that really mattered. It would just get Hubert’s privileges taken away, and make fulfilling his duty harder, not easier.

So Hubert told himself, _Not yet._ Even as he lived to regret staying his hand, he told himself, _Not yet._

_________________________________________

On Jonathan’s ninth birthday, Father took him and the boy’s cat, Ophelia, out into the woods. Hubert and Carmilla put aside their mutual animosity for the day, even as they refused to look at each other. They sat and had a tea party with Lucille, a quiet, quiet little girl who knew not to ask questions, even at six. But Hubert supposed if his eldest brother was at open war with his father and sister, he wouldn’t ask questions either. If he’d been trained since he was a toddler to just let atrocities happen beneath his nose, maybe he’d be happy to.

But that excuse didn’t hold for Carmilla, who showed Lucille how to fold her napkin as if Marta wasn’t likely shrieking in pain right now. But Father said everything was fine. So it was fine. 

Hubert supposed that Carmilla had never seen the scars— _had looked away from the scars_— that she had never been trusted with the whispered fears— _had declared her allegiance to the enemy early_— but she was also the one who never fought to be included. She was the one who, when Marta hadn’t wanted Carmilla around anymore, hadn’t fought and begged to be of use. She took to her magic studies and to making friends with _other people_, as if it wasn’t her job to die for Their Highnesses. How easily Carmilla had found a new purpose, when Hubert couldn’t let go! Even as he was flayed for it and Mother and Father around him begged him to give up, he couldn’t let go… 

But, to be fair, Hubert did know that it wasn’t really Carmilla’s duty to hold on. It never had been; she was the second child, a daughter that would be married off to a house that wasn’t Vestra. It wasn’t Jonathan and Lucille’s duty to suffer this nightmare either. But Father still took Jonathan in the woods, even as he tied a blindfold across Carmilla, Jonathan, and Lucille’s eyes. 

It seemed like a waste to Hubert.

Father came home with Jonathan at sundown, carrying the small boy in his arms. Just the sight of their silhouette in the stiance had told Hubert that something was deeply wrong. Jonathan was crying, but doing so quietly, so quietly. He was caked in blood and shivering. Father took him inside, and then Hubert, Carmilla, and Lucille could hear Mother yelling. They sequestered Jonathan in his room.

It took a few weeks for everyone to realize how deeply wrong something had gone with Jonathan.

He wouldn’t stop shivering and crying and he wouldn't eat. A healer was called in, and then Jonathan was told to drink a certain potion every morning. He could eat and leave his room again, but nothing could persuade the boy to speak.

“Congratulations,” Hubert said to Father one day as they both turned away from the sad sight he’d created. “You’ve destroyed another child. And this time it was even one of your own.”

It was years and years before Jonathan talked again. It seemed as if killing Ophelia had killed something within him, something vital. As Hubert kept walking and screaming and just kept on slaughtering the Goddess’s creatures, he couldn’t quite say that he knew what that felt like. But he did understand the sentiment.

_________________________________________

Three things happened all at once.

Friedrich’s hair turned white.

Friedrich died.

Edelgard, Liesl, and Rolf were brought home.

_________________________________________

As Marta engulfed Rolf tightly in her skeletal grasp and Beron cried into Liesl’s hair, Hubert and El just looked at each other. Neither of them could smile, and dread radiated from El’s eyes. She knew; not the specifics, Hubert didn’t think. But she’d taken one look at Beron and Marta, noticed who wasn’t here— Io, Bryn, Visna, Wilhelm, Friedrich, Lycaon, His Majesty— and known.

Hubert knew how he looked— hollow eyed and bitter and stinking of blood— just confirmed what she suspected. This was a place of horror, of danger, of death; it would have been better had El never come back to her family and friends. Still, Hubert fought past the fear in his bones at what this would mean for her, and lifted up his arms. Little El just stared at him warily, perhaps wondering if he was as complicit in this tragedy, this massacre, as his Father was. And the answer was yes, he was.

But El glanced at Carmilla, and she must have seen something in her— genuine happiness to have El back, a face without lines of stress sketched into it, innocence— that wasn’t in Hubert. Edelgard made a decision and walked into Hubert’s arms and let him hug her. She hugged back, with a fierce, protective grip that betrayed her. Little El had grown up.

No longer was she the littlest of their band, one of the youngest royal children, protected and loved and taken care of. El had assumed responsibility of Liesl and Rolf while in Fhirdiad, no doubt. She’d left their baby sister and come back a guardian.

Hubert held all the tighter. She wouldn’t have to guard him, or guard from him. He would protect her with his life. 

Not, of course, that his silly vow meant anything.

_________________________________________

“I thought Fhirdiad was a dungeon,” El whispered to Hubert, and she didn’t smile the same way anymore, but her lips still quirked awkwardly, “but this is obscene.”

The playroom was an obscene little prison, that was undeniable. Underground and windowless, one exit that was always locked from the outside, and the walls echoed with how hollow it was. But as Hubert sipped from his tea— an overly sweet flavor reserved for children that was vile when mixed the lingering taste of blood that surrounded them— he could only shrug at El’s bitter little joke. 

Somehow, he had grown almost… fond of their prison. Which was likely the intention, another piece of their insidious capture. But when Beron sat and read with Rolf, and Liesl played at healer with Marta, and El sat across from him, all in his line of sight… It wasn’t so bad. At the very least, the consistency was hard to hate. 

When all of them were locked away together, no one was dying.

But Hubert didn’t know how to communicate that to El, so he simply asked, “Oh? Was the _holy_ company there not to your liking?”

El made a soft sound that might have been a laugh, a shade of her old laughs that had once been loud and dignified and pleasant, like bells. Instead of replying, she pulled out that dagger she came home with.

She was constantly fiddling with that knife, it seemed. El had always had an affinity for blades, and because of it, Hubert had been forced to watch her and Beron go to blows far too many times during their childhood days. He had always waited nearby anxiously with bandages and reassuring words and promises of sweets. Hubert had shouted at Beron for pushing his younger sister too hard once, never able to restrain his protective streak for El.

Little El, who now snorted at bitter jokes and couldn’t hold her teacup for any longer than it took to take a sip. That was why she was always toying with the dagger, because her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking with the effort it took to not scratch at her arms. 

Hubert honestly didn’t know whether to scream at her pointless restraint— _just let it go, let it go, I’ll fix all the bleeding and soothe all the burns, just don’t hurt yourself!_— or be relieved. El was fighting. But what did fighting mean?

Beron had never been strong enough to fight it; to fight the despair, the exhaustion, the pain, the fear. And that was fine, because Hubert could take care of him, could fight for them both. But that weakness was also poisonous, because as Beron’s heart still beat, the life drained from his eyes.

Marta was different. She had fought, and fought, and fought. But to what end? She was rail thin and dead-voiced and oh! How fatalistic her words sounded! Hubert had hoped… he’d hoped that maybe El, Liesl, and Rolf being home would ignite something hotter within Marta, something other than her frigid fury. Instead, something seemed to have finally snapped. She did not speak her thoughts and plans aloud, because, by the Goddess, they had learned their lesson about _that_. But Hubert could see the cogs turning in Marta’s head. She did not burn, and she was not frozen. Marta had reached some conclusion that no one else was privy to; she was simply done fighting, which in and of itself was an act of war. 

It frightened Hubert.

But El fiddled with her knife, and smirked.

“No, their holy knights and beautiful stories were all quite boring to me. I missed your stories, Hubert. The scary ones.”

“Which ones?” Hubert knew a lot of scary stories. These days, most of them sounded like the one they were living in.

“The ones about the Black Beast and his crest, and the Goddess’s wrath, and what people do in the shadows.”

Hubert laughed, a nasty, rasping sound. El hadn’t commented on it yet, but he knew she had noticed how his voice had matured, and how it had not quite been natural. Too much screaming; just like the Black Beast, Hubert had over-taxed his one weapon.

“All quite gruesome. You always liked the ones with a shred of truth then, I suppose.”

“No,” El said, after considering that for a moment. Then she grinned, a wide smile accompanied with burning eyes and determination etched into her every line. The sight took Hubert’s breath away. “I liked the ones where I sympathized with the monster too much.”

Hubert ducked his head, and took a moment to pull himself back together. He hadn’t realized until now, just how much he’d missed El. He had to cough before he spoke, lest his too tight throat gave him away.

“Can I tell you a secret, El?” he muttered, looking up at her from under his bangs. “So did I.”

They laughed together for the first time in years, and Beron called over, “Just what is so funny!”

“How frightened you were of Carmilla’s story about the ghost in the gardens,” El snapped back, a haughty smile on her lips. 

Beron managed an indignant yelp at the teasing, before meandering over with Rolf. Hubert fixed them both cups of tea. Marta came to join them as well, holding Liesl’s hand and humming. Hubert poured two more cups, then stood to fetch more water.

“I always quite liked that one,” Marta said, “Do you remember that story, Liesl? The opera singer’s ghost in the gardens.”

“We would sing along! I remember that we would sing and then Beron started crying.”

“I did not!”

“You _cried_, Beron?” Rolf piped up, and Beron’s face grew red. The sight eased something in Hubert’s heart.

“How did it go, Hubert?” El asked, “I don’t remember.”

And Hubert began to sing. Their Highnesses joined in.

It was only a brief, brief moment of happiness they stole in their prison, in the scary story they were living. Ultimately, reminiscing about the better past didn’t change anything that was to come in the bitter future. But for the length of that one song, their love burned brightly enough to keep them warm, and to keep the harsh winds of fate away for just a little while longer.

_________________________________________

Blood and potions and chains. Strapped down and screaming. Scars on their arms, their hearts, their minds.

Hubert knew from Father’s lessons that one could only hold onto themselves for so long.

Liesl, she was eight. She lasted three months before she was as much a wreck as Jonathan, the boy who had been her best friend in another life. Now, she was mute and broken and worthless to them. She was ushered into Brynhilde and Wilhelm’s sanctuary for the failures. 

Rolf was five, and then he was six. He had a crest. Lord Arundel had always touched Rolf too much, and now _they_ touched him too much. They seemed pleased with him, while Rolf seemed distraught; but he didn’t break. It might have been better if he did. Hubert could not say how bad it got in that underground palace of horrors, he could not guess what happened to force her hand. One day, Rolf was a child with a crest and scars on his arms. The next he and Marta were both dead.

They found the dagger that Hubert had gifted Marta next to their corpses, which were warmly nestled in a sea of blood and blankets in her room. 

Marta’s final escape was the blow that destroyed Beron entirely. He no longer spoke in full sentences and his hair had finished greying from the stress. They strapped him down to his bed so he couldn’t flail. So that he couldn’t hurt anyone else, but mostly so that he couldn’t harm himself. 

Beron couldn’t stand to look at this world he lived in anymore, and Hubert didn’t blame him.

And El…

Edelgard’s hair turned white and her spine turned to steel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And all the world's a prison...


	3. A Knife

Hubert had never been in Edelgard’s bedroom before. Such things were improper. But ever since Beron was locked away, there hadn’t been much of a point to the playroom. Not when there was just one child left to keep contained down there. After the funeral, they just let El go back to her room. Hubert followed loyally behind.

It looked exactly like the bedroom of a little girl should, filled with stuffed animals and simplistic board games and a collection of empty, pink sweet tins. Which was why her room was so disturbing to see this dour thirteen-year-old inhabit. The dust had been cleared away, but this was a ghost’s bedroom. Hubert would almost hazard to say it belonged to a dead child. But that would be an insult to El.

She wasn’t dead.

Though she sat in front of her vanity with an upsetting stillness, though her hair had become as white as a wraith’s, though she was clad in black, El wasn’t dead. 

That was Rolf and Marta, who had been laid to ‘rest’ in the royal crypts. There was no great funeral procession, no words even spoken for them. A bishop simply went through the rites, and sealed them away for all eternity. Arundel asked El, Wilhelm, Bryn, Liesl, and Beron to not dwell on the two. And just like that, and memory of Princess Marta and Prince Rolf was wiped away.

They were scratched off the official records, their rooms were cleaned out; far better cleaned than El’s. 

The only thing about Marta that still mattered was the problem of succession. Lord Arundel was campaigning to have El be named heir. It was all anyone could speak about after the funeral. Well… All anyone but Hubert and Edelgard could speak about. The two of them didn’t speak at all.

Rather, Hubert stood at attention behind El, arms clasped behind his back and breathing quiet. She stared at her own face in the mirror. And they both waited. After several minutes, El’s shaky hand reached for the knife at her side, the one that Hubert was honestly astounded that they’d let her keep it. But El had shrieked when a servant tried to take it from her, and Lord Arundel had promised that El would behave. He had stared at El until she nodded her agreement, and the sight had made Hubert shiver. There was some… understanding between El and Arundel, forged during their time in Fhirdiad, and he didn’t like it.

El unsheathed the dagger, and wrapped a swathe of her long hair around her fingers. She brought her blade down, and hacked at the white tresses, slashed and cut and chopped. Hubert watched her passively. El’s face didn’t move an inch during her mutilation, but her eyes burned.

She was alive.

Her chest heaved once she was finished, and El cast down the hair with a disgusted flick of her hand. What was left hung raggedly around her face, a violent display. El reached back up to cut at another of her bangs.

“El!” Hubert called, stopping her all at once. Edelgard glared at him from the mirror in response, and Hubert had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from flinching at the expression. He looked down, bowing his head and folding at the waist. 

“Please, El,” he whispered, “Let me.”

El let out a long deep breath. After an agonizing moment, she nodded, and relinquished her dagger to Hubert.

He dragged a chair over and tried to fix her hair, as best he could.

“Hubert,” El whispered to him, as he attempted to very gently even out the hair at her neck. He had never really been one for blades, despite his prior experience with them. Far too messy. There were spells for most of what blades could do, though unfortunately hairstyling wasn’t one of them. Perhaps he should look into that.

“Yes?”

“Hubert, do you… do you swear… Would you promise that you would do anything for me?”

He paused in his cutting, but only for a second.

“I swear it upon my life, my honor, and the name of Vestra.”

She took another long breath, and rested her fingers on the vanity, spread out and shaking. 

“Anything?”

“Anything. I swear it on— El. Please. I gave my life to you nine years ago.”

“To me?” El asked, “Or to my family?”

Hubert’s fingers stalled along her scalp, the knife resting nicely against her vulnerable temple. _To El… or to House Hresvelg._ That was never really a question Hubert had pondered before. But he supposed it had come that. ‘House Hresvelg’ was how Father justified himself, justified his betrayal of His Majesty. One needed to fall, so that the dynasty might survive.

And perhaps the Insurrection of the Seven would ensure the survival of House Hresvelg in some twisted way. But Hubert had lost too many friends to their culling to care.

“You, El. Just you.” There was no one else left that he loved enough to deserve that loyalty.

“Would you prove it to me, Hubert?” El asked, though each word seemed to be costing her greatly.

“I will.” There was nothing else to do, after all.

Suddenly, El turned around in her chair, turning to look Hubert in the eyes. She was trembling, but her words were steady. Quietly furious.

“Do you know what, what _all this_ has been about?”

Hubert didn’t like to make guesses. But he did have a few theories. 

“The Crest of Seiros?” he asked, and El scoffed even as she nodded.

“The crests. Not just our Crest of Seiros, but… _all of them_. It’s all been about _giving_ us crests, ones we didn’t have before. That’s why… why it was Io, Visna, the triplets, Marta, and Liesl first. They didn’t have one, and those monsters… My uncle says that the empire needs an heir with a crest; someone strong enough that the lords could never usurp them again. But he lied. They want a weapon. The ultimate weapon, a warrior in the image of Nemesis. One with two crests. The Crest of Seiros and the Crest of Flames. That’s what they’ve done to us. That’s what they killed my brothers and sisters for. And they got it. That…” El paused, taking a breath and visibly drawing herself back together. Her posture straightened. “That is why my hair has turned white. It is the sign of their success.”

She blinked, and turned away to wipe at a few tears. Hubert looked down at the knife that was digging into his fingers, giving her some privacy. He had guessed this was the case. Not the particulars, not the matter of _two crests_. He had assumed they were trying to revive the Major Crest of Seiros. But the details didn’t really matter. Only the results. Only the piles and piles of bodies and El’s tears and the pale hair on the floor. 

“Beron’s hair has gone white,” El choked out, and Hubert startled to attention. She was looking at him, with those burning, accusatory eyes. “The strain of bearing two crests has nearly destroyed him, but he’s still alive. They know Bryn won’t be able to bear it; Liesl never had a crest to begin with, it’s too much time and effort for her now; and Wilhelm is of no use to them without being able to move his body. But Beron… even if he’s… Hubert, you _have to_ understand. They will prop him up and put a weapon in his hands. Even as they make me Emperor… Beron will be their mad dog, with two crests. Such power can not be wasted,” she spat out, and Hubert knew she was quoting someone else’s words.

His stomach turned at the picture she was painting, of Beron standing on a battlefield. There was no life in his face, no light in his eyes except for the glow of some relic weapon. Beron, sweet Beron who played at warrior but couldn’t stand blood. Who lost himself, not because of the strain of bearing two crests, but because of the shock and pain of losing two siblings in one fell swoop. They’d turn Beron into a monster, a beast as heartless and black as the one in the stories that used to scare him half to death. 

Hubert knew he was gripping the knife too tightly, because his palms had suddenly grown warm and wet. But surprisingly, he couldn’t feel the pain.

“What do you want me to do?” Hubert asked, and he really, really wanted to cry.

“Please,” El asked, “Save Beron.”

And so, Hubert stood, Edelgard’s dagger still in his hand, and left.

_________________________________________

Beron slept fitfully. He had done that all his life, kicking and punching and talking in his sleep. It used to drive Hubert to distraction during the times they shared the bed together. Beron had just… never been still.

Which was why this hell was especially cruel. 

His jerking wrists had been rubbed raw by the leather straps keeping him down. His knees fought violently against the restraints at his ankles, all their efforts halted by the band around his waist. Beron’s head did not thrash, which was a small relief. If he had been prone to shaking his head, surely the band around his neck would have choked him by now.

But as the rest of his body twitched with whatever dream consumed him, tears leaked out of Beron’s eyes.

He was in so much pain.

Had… even had El not asked him to… This had to be the kindest thing to do.

As Hubert shivered and his chest heaved with panicked breaths, he wasn’t sure if he could convince himself of that. 

_Stupid_, he reminded himself, _stupid, selfish boy._

After he had killed Maurice, Father had gently washed Hubert’s hands and told him, “It was far more painful for you than it was for the hound. Just remember, that when you weep for the dead, you are weeping for yourself. They no longer care.”

The man in the dungeon hadn’t cared.

_Beron doesn’t care._ By the Goddess, Beron hadn’t cared in a long, long time. He scratched and scratched at those scars, he’d stopped eating, he could barely bring himself to smile, even before this. Hubert hadn’t really noticed how shock white Beron’s hair had grown, because the prince had been graying for a over year. Sixteen, and already Beron looked like an old man. 

Beron didn’t want to see this world he was living in anymore. That’s why he broke down and stopped thinking sensibly, and would he really want to slaughter and contribute to this cruelty? Hubert had to believe that Beron— even half-deranged— would never want that.

Still, as the tears slipped down his face and Hubert tried to remind himself of all the good reasons to do this, he couldn’t raise the knife. Instead, he gave a miserable sob and collapsed at the side of the bed he’d slept in several times as a child. From his knees, Hubert reached up and pet Beron’s brittle, white hair and cried harder.

Just a few more minutes… Hubert would take just a few more minutes for himself. 

But the tears and the excuses dried up.

_Not for me,_ Hubert reminded himself.

He ambled to his feet.

_Not for House Hresvelg._

Hubert laid one final kiss upon Beron’s brow.

_Not for the Empire._

He readied the knife.

_For Edelgard._

_________________________________________

When Hubert gave her with the knife back— clean, because he would never present her with anything coated in her brother’s blood— El burst into tears. She cried harder than she ever had as a child, and Hubert gathered the little girl he grew up with into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she hiccuped, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“He forgives you,” Hubert whispered back. 

“No no,” El mumbled, just burying her face further into his chest. Despite all his reassurances that Beron would thank them, Edelgard just kept apologizing.

_________________________________________

Father knew about what happened with Beron.

They’d found him dead in the morning, and Father had spent all night and day at the palace afterwards, stalking through the halls like an agitated cat. He came to confront Hubert near midnight, face haggard and eyes wet, and he slammed open Hubert's bedroom door. Father had stared at him, breathing hard. And Hubert had only looked back mildly, daring him, challenging him to say anything. 

He didn’t need to speak after all. 

The look on Hubert’s face was as much an admission of guilt as anything else could have been. _Punish me for it_, Hubert thought as he stared into his Father’s eyes, _Send me to the execution stand. Tell them it was me who destroyed the weapon they made from the corpse of my friend._

But Father hadn’t. 

He’d kept his mouth shut, both in front of Hubert and seemingly everyone else; they were still looking for the assassin. No one but Father, Hubert, and El knew. Beron was free. Beron was free, and there was nothing their enemies could do about it.

As Hubert and El held each other’s hands at another funeral, it was a bitter victory. But they smiled, because they had to take their satisfaction where they could find.

_________________________________________

As the months flitted away, everyone's attention turned to the ceremony that would officially name El heir. It was to be a grand, happy event, to distract Adrestia from the years of sorrow and upheaval. There was a lot of planning, a lot of logistics involved. And El was doing her best to make a nuisance of herself.

“Uncle,” she would snap, “Whatever were you thinking buying carnations? Forget-me-nots are the only way to decorate!”

Then two days later it was, “Surely you know that I love carnations, Uncle! Why would you reject such a lovely offering? Pay the florist double, Uncle, for all the trouble that’s been caused.”

“Why not use the blue wool we bought in Fhridiad for my dress?” she sneered at another time, “It was _such_ an important time of my life, after all.”

“When! Have I _ever_ worn anything but red? Red velvet, Uncle!” She screamed after the blue dress was made, bellowing at Arundel at the top of her lungs, before turning back to the seamstress and praising all her beautiful embroidery on the wool. 

It did make Hubert laugh— snickering at El’s back, always three feet behind— as she transitioned so seamlessly between screaming harpy child and magnanimous princess. She’d never been a bratty child. _Bossy_, yes, like all of the Hresvelgs, but not bratty or prone to tantrums. El was always far too scared of being left out or left behind to complain. Her new act held a stench of irony to it that Hubert just ate up.

She was screaming and screaming and screaming, and she had thrown herself onto the ground so that they had to physically drag her to her lessons for the day. El wailed on the floor like a child, the most effective rebellion she could possibly exact. Hubert grinned down at the sight, unabashedly sneering at Arundel when the man looked at him beseechingly.

“Boy!” he snapped, the first time Arundel had ever paid Hubert any mind in all the years they had been acquainted. “Carry the girl! If you will not _behave_, Edelgard-”

“I do not follow your orders.” A smirk twisted Hubert’s mouth and the expression grew wider as Arundel’s eyes narrowed. “I am El’s vassal. I serve only her.”

“Precisely,” Edelgard said from the floor, where she’d stopped screaming long enough to watch Arundel squirm. “So do be careful not to _overstep_, Uncle.”

Lord Arundel remained quiet for one long moment, before he muttered, “I see,” with so much vitriol that it nearly sent a shiver down Hubert’s back. He glared at El with a cold bitterness, months of frustration bubbling up. Arundel couldn’t punish his precious heir in a way that mattered, but as they watched the man clench his fists, it was obvious that he had wanted to. El flinched.

Then Arundel turned to settle his eyes— El’s eyes, Beron’s eyes— on Hubert. They gleamed with a revelation of some sort, and victory. Arundel smirked.

Hubert had but one moment to think, _perhaps that was too far_, before his nose exploded in pain and the world started rushing past him. As fast as a whip, Arundel’s fist had struck out and collided with Hubert’ face. It was a stinging blow that sent Hubert staggering. The strike burned, and El was screaming, and before Hubert could right himself, there were five frigid fingers in his hair. 

Arundel pulled, yanking Hubert’s head back, and then he gripped around Hubert’s jaw with the other hand. 

“You think you’re clever, don’t you, boy? Just like your father,” Arundel whispered in Hubert’s ear, overtop the din of El’s yelling. “You’ll learn.”

Arundel shoved Hubert around to face El, and the hand in his hair pulled him against Arundel’s chest. The man’s other hand was around Hubert’s throat, and he squeezed when Hubert yelled, “El!”

The other knights in the hall, the ones who had been passively watching El’s display before, now held her up in the air, restraining her arms and legs. She was hissing and kicking at them, trying to break free, though both of them doubled her in height. 

“El!” Hubert tried to cry again, but Arundel’s hand was crushing his windpipe, and it was becoming hard make distinguishable sounds.

El stopped fighting as she watched Arundel’s display, as the hand grew tighter around Hubert’s throat. She went limp. 

“Stop!” El yelled, but Arundel didn’t.

“‘El’, is it?” Arundel laughed, “Is that how you refer to your imperial princess, heir to the Adrestian Empire?” There were black spots in Hubert’s vision, and he was choking on his spit. His throat felt more like a column of fire.

“Please, stop! Uncle, _I’m sorry_, please, please. Let Hubert go,” she sobbed.

“Now, I’ve let you do whatever you want with your little friends, Edelgard. But this one… Have you said your vows, boy? Do you want to be a man? If you are truly Edelgard’s vassal, you must act properly. Now, refer to her properly. Say, ‘Please beg for my life, Lady Edelgard’.”

The pressure on his throat was suddenly released. If it had not been for the grip on his skull, Hubert surely would have fallen to his knees. As it was, he gave a rough cry as he struggled to put pressure on his feet and lock his kneecaps. Hubert eventually found his bearing and looked towards Arundel. He could hear El sniffling in the background. He was shaking, and Hubert didn’t know if that was the anger or the lack of air.

He spat in Arundel’s face.

Instantly, Hubert’s back collided with the wall, and the hand was back on his throat. It was squeezing, squeezing, and Hubert was very aware of how full his mouth was. Full of air, full of liquid. Saliva, and something that was suspiciously warm. Blood, most likely, from his dripping nose though he couldn’t taste it. As the world turned into a patchwork of holes and blurred colors, the idea that he could no longer differentiate blood from air or water was almost funny.

There was a loud _crack_ that echoed through the hall, and then Hubert knew nothing but the sound of El’s screaming and the sudden sensation of relief. He was breathing, but his vision wasn’t back, and the world was rushing past him… 

The screaming had stopped, and Hubert could see Father. Gentle hands touched his throat, the soft balm of Faith magic— which Father was terrible at— easing some of the worst pain. Hubert breathed. He was resting against the wall, no El, no Arundel in sight. 

“Oh, thank the Goddess,” Father murmured when he noticed Hubert’s eyes had cracked open, even though they both knew he didn’t believe in the Goddess. 

“El,” Hubert tried to croak, but Father shushed him.

“Don’t speak. Your mother’s going to have a field day with this. Shhh, Hubert,” Father whispered when he tried to struggle up, gently pushing Hubert back down. “Lady Edelgard is fine. She’s well, she’s fine. She’s gone to her lessons, of her own volition, on her own two feet. You’re the unwell one; you scared Her Highness half to death. What were you thinking, Hubert?”

“Fuck… him,” he warbled. Hubert had to tilt his head back and close his eyes for a moment. Everything was still so unsteady.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s what you were thinking. Stupid, foolish boy.” There was so much sorrow in Father’s voice that the childish part of Hubert almost wanted to cry. “We need to take you home.”

Hubert tried to sit up again, eyes snapping open and his elbows jostling. “But El-” he said, before breaking into a fit of coughing. There was blood coming up with his spit, and Hubert still couldn’t taste it.

Father took a handkerchief and wiped Hubert’s mouth as if he really was a boy, and gently held his head up right. As Hubert tried to catch his breath again, Father rested their foreheads together, and mimed the slow motions of breathing. They stayed that way for several minutes.

“Oh, Hubert,” Father whispered. “I’m sorry.” 

Before Hubert could comprehend that his father had apologized to him, something that had never happened before, Father was speaking again. 

“But _Lady Edelgard_ doesn’t need this of you.”

Hubert gave a whine from low in his throat, a beastly, nasty sound that he was ashamed of. But he couldn’t make any words with the way his throat flared.

“Lady Edelgard needs your protection, but she needs you alive for that. You can’t keep… Hubert, you can’t keep running head first into every situation you think is wrong, with only your morality and wits to protect you. You can’t keep shining like a beacon of righteousness; if Lord Arundel thinks you’re a liability, he’ll kill you. Why don’t you understand that? You could have died.”

_I nearly died._ For a little bit of spit to the face and using a childhood nickname, he almost died. Hubert was shaking, and he shuddered violently as he remembered the look in Arundel’s eyes. He would have killed Hubert. Killed him in calculated rage and felt nothing. 

Hubert’s whole body might have slumped over had it not been for Father’s hands cupping his face. 

He blinked up at the man, and felt like holding onto and weeping in front of his father for the first time in a lifetime. He didn’t, though. Instead, Hubert asked _then what?_ with his eyes.

Father’s lips quirked in that expression of his that wasn’t quite a smile. It was astoundingly bitter.

“You’re a Vestra, my son. Mold yourself to what they want to see. Hide in the darkness. Please, for the love of the Goddess, learn to conceal yourself better. Those emotions on your face, in your heart, they are your weakness. Don’t let Arundel see, you should have never let him see how much you and Lady Edelgard care for one another. Now he knows who you are, and he knows how to hurt her. If you can’t learn not to care… then don’t let them see you care for anything. And then they can never hurt you, and you can do your job.”

Still shaking and breathing and weak, Hubert nodded. He let Father pick him up and take him home, he let Mother fuss and ignored Carmilla’s concerned stares and Jonathan’s silence and Lucille’s stupid little stuffed rabbit that she said would heal him. Hubert stared into the mirror for hours and practiced not caring.

But he never did learn how to fully hide his expressions and emotions, to stomach his indignation and outrage and how much he just _felt_. Hubert tried to hold his tongue, to refer to everyone properly, to play a role. He stopped grinning when _Lady Edelgard_ won a small victory, stopped looking Lucille in the eyes, stopped letting people see him relish anything. He couldn’t stop the way his fingers twitched when Arundel entered the room.

But Hubert did grow his hair out, if just to hide a little bit of the hatred in his eyes.

_________________________________________

“Someone,” Father once told him, “is always listening.”

It hadn’t felt that way when they were locked beneath the ground, away from everyone and everything. But now Hubert understood. As he roamed the palace grounds with _Lady Edelgard_, walked the streets of Enbarr with Mother and Lucille, took his lessons with Father in the cellars of House Vestra, Hubert realized that someone… was always listening.

A thousand eyes, a thousand ears. And all of them enemies. The Empire belonged to Aegir, House Hresvelg belonged to Arundel, and Fodlan belonged to the Church and its Knights of Seiros who stood aside and ate from Arundel’s hand as their former most loyal retainer was brought low. 

For Edelgard, and therefore for Hubert as well, the world around them was their prison, and every seemingly neutral party their enemy.

It was far easier to stand with the Seven Lords. No one here would pick Princess Edelgard over them. Not yet.

Hubert had to admit, Arundel’s capture had been brilliantly executed. He did not need to trap El in a cell. He needed only to make her feel unsafe everywhere else. It was hard to want to leave her bedroom when no one around them could be trusted. It was hard to live in a world that was against you.

Mother’s muffling spell became their lifeline. The only time El stopped shaking was when they were secluded in her bedroom and Hubert had cast the spell that let them talk freely. Even then, they dared not speak in more than metaphors and allusions half the time. Quite literally nothing was safe. No one was safe.

Except… No one was safe. For Edelgard and Hubert, nothing was safe. 

Except for each other. And they had to learn to live that way.

Hubert sent in a request for quarters in the Royal Palace, and it was granted. He moved in down the hall from Edelgard.

_________________________________________

The little girl in front of El—

The little girl in front of _Lady Edelgard_ was tall for her age and leggy. Enbarr was warm enough in the spring, but she wore far too few clothes in this climate for Hubert’s comfort, and there were marks all across her body. Many of them were blistering and red around her skin, as if they had been done recently. Hubert couldn’t help but think of the tattoos on Petra Macneary’s body as a brand from her homeland, a reminder to both the Empire and to her that she would always be of Brigid. 

Princess Petra bowed before Lady Edelgard with perfect form, and Hubert would commend her for that. She played her part well, eyes lowered and fingers clasped behind her back and she was _oh so grateful_ to receive His Majesty’s, Her Highness’s, and the Prime Minister’s hospitality. Her broken words and heavy accent did nothing to hide the eloquence of her speech. 

Her hair was all tied back, though, and she couldn’t hide how her eyes burned.

Burned like Edelgard’s eyes, like Hubert’s eyes; a soul hungry for righteousness and justice, a child holding back their screams, desperate to fight in anyway she could. Those tattoos on her body were Princess Petra’s screams, a fiery defiance. 

As Princess Petra stood back up, her face puffy and rigid with the effort to look unaffected, Hubert heard an exhalation of breath from in front of him. El— Lady Edelgard shifted, and then stepped forward, breaking rank from His Majesty, Arundel, and all his nobles. She did not smile, but Edelgard bowed to Princess Petra; it was a shallow gesture, but one that drew a few gasps. Lady Edelgard took Princess Petra’s small, shaking hands, and said, “Welcome. You will receive nothing but kindness here, that I promise you.”

Princess Petra was housed in what used to be Lady Visna’s room. She took all her meals with Lady Edelgard and Hubert. During her lessons— all about the language at first and then all about Fodlan— Lady Edelgard sent Hubert to go loom above Petra’s tutors. Hubert was simply grateful that his recent burst in height made the academics quiver, and that his face didn’t crack as Princess Petra shot him tentative smiles behind her professor’s back.

It wasn’t perfect. 

Petra was a little girl, of an age with Liesl— who was locked away, away from the light of day, society, and certainly the dangerous foriegn princess. Princess Petra was a child, one who had no need to know about the corpses in the cellars, the ghosts in the gardens, the war machine Arundel was manufacturing; she didn’t need to know about those who slithered in the dark of Adrestia. Of course, as much as Hubert and Lady Edelgard tried to spare her, Princess Petra was also an enemy.

An unknown, yes, but one who veered towards dangerous rather than benign. She was good with her knives, with her bow, with her silent steps. She frightened Hubert, behind her stuttering promises of friendship and sunny smiles. Princess Petra was as much an enemy as any of them, until proven otherwise.

_________________________________________

Most days, Hubert didn’t truly understand Edelgard’s war. He had listened to her explain her ideals— about the church, about the nobility, about the history of Fodlan— a thousand times. And in the abstract, he agreed. What was the Church but a self-righteous institution built on violence, power, and false hope of salvation? What were the nobles but a greedy lot with no sense of duty and loyalty, sucking dry anyone they could sink their teeth into?

Both could go, and Hubert would not weep. But he was not so righteously indignant about it as Lady Edelgard wished he would be.

Hubert didn’t really care about bringing freedom to Fodlan. He didn’t even care about Adrestia; that instinct had long since been beaten out of him, after hearing ‘for Adresia, for Adrestia’ every time they cut Beron and Marta open and expected him to believe it was right.

What Hubert did care about, though, was Lady Edelgard. 

He cared about her amassing enough power and independence that they could slaughter Arundel and his slithering compatriots. He cared about revenge. Hubert wanted only to see her stand above their corpses; that rotting infestation ripped from the ground and burned so that it could never return.

Unfortunately, they could not destroy their enemies from Adrestia alone. Not when they slithered in Faerghus— Arundel’s refuge— and they bred in the Alliance. The Church would never allow the purge that was needed, the weeding of the nobility, the crossing of borders, or the destruction of the crests, their ultimate tool. Those Who Slithered in the Dark and the Church mirrored each other, Hubert understood that much. They were both ancient institutions built on horror and blood and lies, and both would have to go for Lady Edelgard to truly be free.

Which was what made Hubert agree with Edelgard’s lofty ambitions, even if he did not fully understand them. Hubert was practical in that regard. He could enact her vision for the sake of the results, and not truly believe in the rhetoric. Frankly, much of what Lady Edelgard said about the state of Fodlan sounded superfluous to him, and some of it insane. 

As Edelgard recounted the cracked and heretical history lessons Lord Arundel had taught her in Fhirdiad, repeated his claims and ambitions, Hubert didn’t understand. At first, he hadn’t known if he even believed her claims, though it pained him to doubt El— _Lady Edelgard_.

The Archbishop… an immortal monster? 

_What happened in Fhirdiad?_ Hubert wanted to demand of her, _What did he show you, what did he do, what did you forge with him there?_ But he would never really know what accord Lady Edelgard and Lord Arundel came to in Fhirdiad. So he swallowed his fear and hurt, and tried to understand. He tried to follow her logic, and see the truth that she was trying to give him.

Hubert didn’t believe in the Goddess. If not the Goddess, Lady Edelgard challenged him, where did the crests come from?

Crest stones, and blood, and beasts. 

Hubert could at least admit this: he had seen beasts. He would believe there lived many types with many abilities, perhaps even some sentient and twisted enough to make a slave contract with humanity. But it didn’t all make sense. He knew there was something he was missing. There was something Lady Edelgard was missing, that they didn’t yet understand. But Hubert would find it. 

Mages— dressed all in black with heinous masks— skulked about the palace. They kept to the cellars mostly, to the shadows and behind Arundel’s back. But they were there. It was not hard for Hubert to drag one into a dark corner and hiss, “Teach me.”

When Lord Arundel heard, he laughed. 

“Let the boy understand,” Arundel said. “Maybe he’ll even be cooperative if he finds a little bit of light in the dark.”

And that was how Hubert became an apprentice to Those Who Slither in the Dark.

_________________________________________

His lessons were exhausting, in more ways than the physical. Blood and bodies and dark sorcery. It burned his body to channel such wicked arts, far more than normal Reason magic did. But the results… could not be denied.

There were also secrets. Illusions, shuddering corpses, transforming animals. Wicked scales, and the skulls of creatures Hubert had never heard described in tales let alone histories. What power pulsed through the remains. 

Hubert tried not to think too hard about the experiments, about the lingering sensation of blood that coated his mouth. Instead, he thought of the flimsy dagger at his side and the feeling of having the life choked out of him. Hubert let himself lust after their weapons, the power. 

_This is safety_, he thought as the Miasma burned his fingers, _this is freedom._

_________________________________________

Lady Edelgard noticed the dark bags around his eyes and some of the gauntness in Hubert’s figure. He’d been forgetting to eat, too absorbed in all the new historical texts he’d been granted access to and the spells he’d never heard of before, and too tired of throwing up all his food because it tasted like blood. Standing so near the horrorshow that was the palace’s cellars had not made his sleeping hours desirable either.

So, Lady Edelgard had demanded that he attend to her all day rather than go about his new studies, and requested Princess Petra’s company. Today, they would be having dance lessons.

Petra did not know how to do a proper Fodlan waltz, but she was eager to learn. Over a year had passed since her she was brought to Adrestia, but she looked better, not worse. Petra actually spoke the language now, and she wore the warm, proper gowns of a young girl without any fidgeting or awkwardness. She gave Hubert a friendly grin as he skirted at the edges of the room while Edelgard took her hands. 

Hubert thought it was silly, but only Princess Petra, Lady Edelgard, and Lucille bothered to smile at him anymore. The selfish part of him relished the sights.

“One, two, three. Step, step, turn,” Edelgard chanted for Petra as they waltzed around the ballroom. The sound was hypnotic, even if there was no music. The simple rhythm was almost… lulling, and Hubert slid down to the floor to watch, rather than stand at attention. His eyes were drifting closed, too many sleepless nights catching up with him. 

_One, two, three. Step, step, turn._

“Hubert.”

He jerked upright at the sound of his name, and Lady Edelgard and Princess Petra were giggling at him. Hubert could feel his blush creeping up his face, and he flinched from the sight of them. He kept his head down as he stood up, trying to shake away the image of Carmilla and Marta— dark hair and light hair, tall and short, giggling at his expense— dancing together from his mind. Hubert cleared his throat.

“Yes, Lady Edelgard?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, amusement written all over her face. It was a rare enough expression that the sight was almost a relief. Lady Edelgard’s face turned very serious, though, and she held out her hands in proper waltzing form. 

“Come and dance with me, Hubert, I want to show Petra how it should look between an experienced man and woman. And then you should take the lead with Petra, though you are far too tall for both tasks.”

“Perhaps I am too tall, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert rasped, carefully hiding the roll of his eyes. “But that is hardly my fault.”

“Are you implying it’s mine?”

“Never.”

Hubert placed one of his hands on Edelgard’s waist and the other in her grasp. Though they were now seventeen and fifteen rather than eight and six, he was still far, far too tall for them to dance comfortably. Hubert hunched.

“Honestly,” Lady Edelgard said with a huff that was almost a laugh as they walked through the motions. “This is ridiculous! I am too short to lead for Petra, you are too tall for both of us.” 

Petra was laughing at them.

“It is a shame Jonathan is not here,” Edelgard mused, and the mention of his brother’s name was like a shot to Hubert’s spine. He stumbled, but just a little bit. “He’s around Petra’s age, isn’t he? He shouldn’t be too tall yet, but tall enough.”

Hubert could see what she was trying to do. But Jonathan was _not_ a fit companion for the girl that Lady Edelgard wanted to pretend was her younger sister. He narrowed his eyes at her, and Lady Edelgard looked crushed for a moment. But she recovered. She always did. 

“Oh!” Petra exclaimed as Hubert and Edelgard parted, “are you having a… a… I am not knowing the word, I am sorry. A boy sister. At least, I am thinking ‘Jonathan’ is a boy title.”

“It is. I have a brother, four years my junior. And two younger sisters. They live with my parents.”

Petra’s eyes softened, and this was not the response Hubert had wanted.

“You are not with your family?”

“I don’t want to be,” he snapped, perhaps a bit too harshly. Lady Edelgard sent him a sharp look. It was a clear dismissal, and Hubert made his retreat as Edelgard went over to comfort Petra, who didn’t really seem to be in any distress. But who was Hubert to tell Lady Edelgard that the foreign princess didn’t need mothering?

He was a servant, a vassal. All of the Vestras were, and if Edelgard wanted Jonathan at court, he would have to come. Jonathan, with all his accusing looks and shut mouth and need to hide himself away. Hubert could almost see him facing down Lord Arundel, damning the man with silence better a court could convict a man. Jonathan’s mind would turn too fast, and he’d condemn Arundel with his eyes, and die for it. He was always too smart to justify and stomach what went on around him. Maybe that was why the boy refused to speak. He knew his silence was better received than all his pleas to Father to spare Ophelia had been.

Lucille’s ninth birthday had passed last year. She wasn’t taken into the woods, her yappy little dog still lived, and her food probably didn’t taste like blood. 

Some days, Hubert wanted to hate her. He wanted to hate Jonathan too, who had been able to get through to Father and make him _stop_, make him _change_, make him _spare someone_, anyone. Jonathan did more to save Lucille and her hound than Hubert ever managed to do for Beron and Marta. 

“This isn’t fair,” Hubert whispered to himself, even though he didn’t believe in fairness.

“It wasn’t,” Lady Edelgard said from behind him, successfully scaring the life out of Hubert for the second time that day. He whirled around, and as she stared up at him, Edelgard looked exhausted. 

“I’m sorry,” she declared, looking him in the eye as she always did when she apologized. “That was… I shouldn’t interfere in your family life. And it was foolish of me to bring Petra into this.”

Lady Edelgard heaved a sigh, and then looked as the floor.

“She asked about… about my sisters and brother.” _About Brynhilde and Wilhelm and Liesl, locked away from everyone’s view._ “And, of course, I had to send her away, scold her for asking questions. For overstepping her bounds. You were right. It’s best not to get too attached.”

Hubert always felt terrible when he was right.

They stopped spending so much time with Princess Petra.

_________________________________________

Hubert received odd and… unsavory tasks sometimes. Some were from Father— the bloodiest ones— some were from Arundel— the most unsavory— and some were from Lady Edelgard— the odd ones. There were visits and donations to the Western Church, but also requests that Hubert help Lady Edelgard with her history lessons away from Arundel’s eye. Sometimes Hubert was ordered to pretend that the Imperial Princess had retired for the night, or to roll his eyes as just the right point during the Prime Minister’s speech. On more than one occasion, he was asked to put the fear of the Goddess into some noble that had drawn Lady Edelgard’s ire. Once, he was even asked to buy some… undergarments for the princess.

He had never been asked to _find_ anyone before.

But that was his task. 

“There were other children down there,” Edelgard had whispered, “Ones kept in real cages, ones not given fine meals, baths, or beds. We were the lucky ones.”

Hubert had never heard of anyone besides Their Highnesses being… being _experimented_ on. Marta and Beron never made mention of such a thing. Lady Edelgard shrugged when he told her that— both of them carefully omitting her brother and sister’s names, refusing breach the gaping hole between them that was never disturbed or touched.

“I don’t see why anyone would have told you. What could you have done?”

Nothing, but it didn’t stop the sting of betrayal in Hubert’s chest from panging. 

“What do you want me to do, Lady Edelgard?”

“There were two… I think they lived. Might have. Emile, and a girl so pale her skin looked like white paint. Could you find them?”

_Oh El_, Hubert thought as he bowed and vowed to search for her missing compatriots. _Are you really going to try this again?_ It seemed like far too much trouble to Hubert, to keep looking for allies, for… friends. Not when none of them could be trusted.

But it was not his place to question orders.

His search took him east, to Hyrm territory. It was several months of wasted evenings and pointless trips and paper trails, but he eventually found a blond young man with dead eyes in Duke Aegir’s employ. The knight was slaughtering revolting commoners like he thought that if he could just cut them deep enough, maybe the result would be different this time. His eyebrows furrowed everytime one of them fell, disappointment written across his face. Hubert found the display distasteful, and he had half a mind to leave Duke Aegir’s mad dog to his work. 

But the knight moved far faster than any normal person should, and every blow brushed off him, no matter how sharp the weapon. Something about him has been _changed_, and he fought here, chained. Hubert had to at least confront the man, confirm whether he remembered Lady Edelgard as well as she remembered him, had to extend that hand. His conscience wouldn't be able to stomach doing otherwise.

Hubert hated being so good at his job.

He approached the knight once they were both sequestered in Hyrm Castle, a derelict structure that didn’t host any Hyrms. They were all dead, killed for their rebellion. Now, only Duke Aegir’s men wandered in the keep, the knight among them. 

“Emile, was it?” Hubert asked the knight from behind, and was nearly impaled for his efforts. He was pinned against a wall and faced with a snarl that bordered on rabid. Hubert merely tilted his nose up and sniffed. 

“The Imperial Princess,” he rasped, “Lady Edelgard von Hresvelg, has an invitation for you.”

It took a moment, but the knight’s eyes widened and narrowed, and his face softened. 

“Edel,” he muttered, voice far deeper than his delicate features belied. Hubert cared more about how the knight’s grip slackened on his shirt. 

“Yes, _Lady Edelgard_. She sent an invitation, requesting that you join her services. Do you accept?” he said archly, and the knight finally back away. 

“What does she want?” the knight asked, as if this was a hard question. Hubert examined his eyes and hands, but the man didn’t seem particularly… impaired, not like Brynhilde or Liesl. Still, Hubert elected to be kind, no matter how badly he wanted to walk away and pretend this conversation had never happened.

“Lady Edelgard knows of your skills,” Hubert said, and the knight tightened his fingers around his lance and threw his shoulders back with pride. “She would take you into her employ, as a knight and a personal ally.”

“No.”

As Hubert blinked and swallowed his indignation, the knight walked away, not even considering the royal offer. Hubert gaped, anger mounting.

Lady Edelgard went to all this trouble to extend a hand to this ‘Emile’ who she felt a kinship with, and he rejected her? The only person alive who also knew what Those Who Slither in the Dark did! And he walked away!

“Is this what you really want?” Hubert snapped at the knight’s retreating back, clenching his fists in anger. “To slaughter commoners like livestock? To be used like an animal by the people who cut you apart and put you back together?”

The knight paused, and Hubert stepped closer.

“You will let your torturerers be your masters?” he hissed, every ounce of now ancient indignation called to the surface. But then the knight’s shoulders slumped, and Hubert was reminded of what a defeated man— No. A defeated and beaten and molded child looked like.

“And what do you propose? How is your princess any better?”

Hubert let out a long hot breath, and he did not even have a proper answer. The comparison was unbearably ludicrous; Lady Edelgard like Arundel! It didn’t even bear considering. Hubert laughed, just a little.

“For one, she would not have you slaughtering the common folk. We have bigger foes to slay. More vile enemies, whose deaths will not be so easy to manufacture, but so much more rewarding. Lady Edelgard promises you revenge. Freedom. Salvation. She promises all of Fodlan a new world, free from the crimes that have been committed against you… and her.”

The knight tilted his head a little, and muttered, “Big promises from a little girl.”

“Perhaps,” Hubert replied, “But Lady Edelgard will see them through.”

There was really no other option. Not for Edelgard, or Hubert, or the knight who was once a boy named Emile.

The knight turned, and his eyes still looked hollow and lifeless, but the tilt of his head might have led someone to confuse the expression on his face for hope. Or perhaps just relief.

“If Lady Edelgard can really promise me their heads… Aegir, _the dark ones_… If I get a good fight out of it, I will be her weapon. If the little girl can really do it.”

“She will,” Hubert replied, and his voice shook. 

And the knight smiled, just a little. He nodded.

_________________________________________

_Kronya_ was the pale girl’s name, and she was the one who found him. In the rocky plains of Alliance territory, she caught up to Hubert as he was examining some ruins.

Sitting atop a boulder and swinging her legs, she called down to him, “Oh errand boy!”

Her skin was exactly as white as Lady Edelgard had described, but Hubert hadn’t expected just how pale that really meant. Hubert hadn’t known such a color could exist in nature, but Edelgard’s hair wasn’t exactly natural either. The cruel efficiency of Those Who Slither in the Dark could do incredible things. Hubert elected not to mention it to the girl.

She explained, before he could get a word in edgewise, what her name was, and how she had in fact been living beneath the palace when she and ‘Edel’ were children. Since then, she’d been moved out here for ‘school stuff’ and she was having a delightful time and didn’t need anyone’s help or charity.

“Edel’s a sweet girl, but really, I’m fine! So, run along now, errand boy.”

Hubert resigned himself to the fact that he would just be insulted or assaulted by all his encounters during this mission, and snorted. 

“Forgive me, but I find that hard to believe,” he drawled, “But if you are afraid… I assure you, we have means of protecting our own.”

So many different ways to dispose of a body, but also so many ways to ruin someone’s life. Scandal, a new assignment, a ruined or threatened relationship; addiction or fear or love. They didn’t have much power over Duke Aegir, but he let them take his knight easily enough in exchange for not telling the public about his… less palatable crimes in Hyrm. Hubert needed only to hold a small flame to a book to get the record keeper to name the knight Jeritza, last son of house Hyrm. It wasn’t much, but if Lady Edelgard wanted to ‘borrow’ Those Who Slither in the Dark’s experiments, she still had enough clout to take them into her fold. 

Kronya didn’t seem to agree.

“Our own, huh?” she said with a slightly smaller smile, still kicking her legs incessantly. “Funny way to put it. You really think I’m one of yours?”

“Lady Edelgard thinks of you as her… compatriot. Or perhaps, her friend. It would take only your word, your presence, and your loyalty to solidify that bond. And that is not an association that could, or would, be broken or betrayed. Stand with us. Stand against—”

“Ah, ah, ah!” Kronya called, and that blinding grin was back on her face. “Be careful, errand boy. I’m going to give you that one freebie. That’s a real nice thought, but run along now. I already belong to a people. And no matter how many illusions I wear or what words I say, that’s skin deep.”

Hubert regarded her, examining that unwavering grin, the small bite to her words. He gave a low bow. 

“Very well. But I would remind you… crests are skin deep, as well. Blood deep. And we will dissolve those, burn them away as if they are no more than words on paper. We will be stronger. Do you still pick that side? Be careful now.”

She laughed.

“You know, it was really nice to meet you, errand boy! Run along now! And good luck.”

She gave a wink, and then Kronya was gone.

When Hubert told Lady Edelgard, she just sighed. It was a disappointment, but not unexpected. But despite Kronya’s refusal, they had ‘Jeritza’. So this task was not a complete waste of time.

_________________________________________

There was a delicate balance to recruiting people for Lady Edelgard’s war. Not Arundel’s war, but Edelgard’s. They were fundamentally different endeavors, and therefore required different touches.

The strength of Those Who Slither in the Dark was guaranteed to them, but only for half of the war. Arundel was naturally unaware that one day Hubert would make his blood boil in his veins and then cut his still living body open and hang the entrails from the palace gate. Therefore he thought that his twisted comrades and those nobles he owned would be enough. Hubert and Lady Edelgard didn’t believe that. 

Firstly, because they would destroy Aegir before even turning their blades on the Church. The nobility would have to be culled. But that meant they had to feel out who could be trusted to fall in line with the new order, who they could entice to swear to Lady Edelgard rather than Arundel, before they started.

Of the Seven Great Lords, they approached Count Bergliez first. His father had been the one to join the Insurrection, so the new count, Ernest von Bergliez, seemed more likely to stand against Arundel than any of the others. His innocence also made Lady Edelgard more comfortable with the man’s assistance. 

When he went to speak to the count, Hubert had hedged his bets on the man’s famous sense of stiff honor and the Bergliez disdain for crests, of which they had none. Surely Bergliez, who reportedly respected little more than strength, would not cling so tightly to the nobility and their blood-born aids. This did prove to be the case, but convincing the count to even listen was harder than swaying him to their side. Bergliez had taken one look at Hubert— the same age as his oldest boy, but not yet in the Officer’s Academy— and slammed down a decanter of brandy.

“Drink with me, boy,” Bergliez said, “Then we’ll see if you have anything to say that’s worth listening to.”

Hubert’s investigation had not informed him prior to this endeavor that Count Bergliez apparently required all his personal meetings to drink a glass of brandy before he actually spoke to them. Neither had Hubert’s life experience prepared him for such an endeavor, because a glass of wine at dinner with Mother was not the same thing as trying to drink with Ernest von Bergliez. But he tried. For the sake of Lady Edelgard’s cause, Hubert held his breath and downed a glass. Before the brandy could take affect, he tried to stutter through their ambitions in a way that didn’t totally give the game away. 

As Bergliez poured another glass and slid it towards Hubert, he simply nodded. Hubert drank and his face grew warmer. When he finished his second glass, Bergliez said, “Never did like Arundel, or what he and my father did. Didn’t seem right. I’ll send you my half-brother. He should be an asset on this.”

Hubert had to catch his grin.

“Go talk to Hevring. Bastard isn’t much, but he knows how to do his job and you’ll need him if you really want Arundel gone. Not to mention, he’s slippery. Changes with the times that one, no sense of loyalty. If anyone will rat twice, it’s him.”

Hevring had been involved with the insurrection, but Hubert took Bergliez at his word. He resolved to talk to Count Elbert von Hevring. Later. Another day. After Hubert had slept off his rapidly slurring words.

When Hubert finally made contact with the Minister of Internal Affairs a few months later, Count Hevring simply remarked, “My, my, you are ambitious children. You move too quickly for my taste, but I suppose no one cares much for my opinion on the thing. Don’t you worry about me, Lord Hubert, I see no reason to be a problem for Her Highness if she wants to make one of herself for Arundel. Why, you might have just solved one of my problems. I won’t need an heir, after all, if you remove my house from its position.”

Hubert had heard… less than pleasing rumors about Hevring’s only son. He resolved not to ask.

“I’ve a woman in my employ who should do you well, a commoner who can’t get a rank above Sergeant because she didn’t attend Garreg Mach. Look up Ladislava, and then look me up again when you actually have a government to run.”

_Two out of seven of the Great Lords._ Hubert had a slightly giddy moment where he was forced to realize that… that they might _actually_ be able to do this.

After Hevring, there was also Gerth and Varly to consider, but a preliminary look at the Minister of Religious Affairs proved that he would be undesirable for their purposes. Hubert took one glance at the man’s paper trail and instantly crossed his name off their list. He would not have guessed that squirrely Varly of all people was Aegir’s right hand, but that turned out to be the case. Quite frankly, Hubert had expected Gerth to be the one knee deep in Aegir’s depravity. That wasn’t the case, though, and when Gerth was approached, the man pled neutrality. Huberty consulted Lady Edelgard, and she declared that Gerth was allowed to not pick a side as long as he gave up his title willingly when the time came. Hubert did not inform Lord Gerth about the conditions of his survival, and elected to let the cards fall as they may.

Lord Gerth’s life was now in his own hands now, even if the man didn’t know what choice would decide his fate. That would be fun. Hubert had to make his own fun in this world.

There were other lords and ladies to consult, other questions to ask and loyalties to have pledged. They were less important, but no less time consuming as Hubert poured through their tax files, the complaints and accolades from their commoners, how their houses were run, their performance reports in various positions, their ties to the Church, their ties to Arundel, to Aegir, to anything that could make them dangerous. It was exhausting, soul-wrenching work.

_No man_, Hubert thought as he read about the depravities of Lord Beller and how much money Lady Rusalka had stolen from the poor relief, _should know so many secrets._

Lord Beller came to court not long after Hubert had catalogued his review, and Hubert slipped into the man’s room while he slept. He had learned in recent years that if one placed a cloth across an obstacle’s mouth and then cast Miasma right into the oral cavity, you could kill a man in a matter of seconds. If one was especially careful, it would look like a death from natural causes. 

They found the body before the sun even rose, while Hubert was staring at his pristine, white gloves in the candle light. It had been a hasty, rash, stupid kill. But while some of them could wait— Varly, Aegir, Rusalka could wait— some crimes didn’t deserve patience. Only justice. What had happened Beller’s wife— the former Lady Essar— and their children… Well.

To remove eye sores before Lady Edelgard saw them was just as much Hubert’s job as bringing her allies. And he was growing to be very good at his job.

_________________________________________

When he opened his eyes, Hubert registered his childhood bedroom in an instant. The sight sent his pulse racing, and when he sat up he was shot through with a wave of dizziness. Hubert was forced to gasp for breath to keep the world from spinning, and he could only get air in through his mouth. His nose was stopped up.

“Careful!” a shrill voice called, and then long, slender hands were pushing him down. Hubert let Carmilla settle him back on the bed they’d shared a thousand times in youth, and glared up at her. The question sat on his tongue, but she answered before he was forced to aggravate his sore throat.

“You really are stupid, you know that? You scared Lady Edelgard half to death, not to mention Mother! How long have you been ill?”

“What happened?” Hubert asked, and nearly had his eardrums busted open for the effort.

“_What happened!_ You collapsed! Fell on your face, right there in the royal audience chamber! I mean honestly, Hubert, how could you let this happen? Do you know how much of a fool you looked like? Father is mortified, I don’t doubt it.”

Carmilla placed a hand on the side of his face and dug her thumb in his cheekbone. Her face was somewhat hazy to look at, but Hubert could pick out her furrowed eyebrows and her twisted mouth. She ran her thumb more softly under his eye.

“When was the last time you slept?” Carmilla whispered, disbelief bleeding from her voice.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Hubert mumbled, taking the opportunity to close his eyes. Focusing on her shifting features had drained him. “I was worried I wouldn’t have the wherewithal to get back up again.”

Carmilla snorted, a delightfully unladylike sound that she had very rarely let slip since… since… Hubert couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember much about Carmilla at all, not after the time they were, what? Eleven and twelve? They’d stopped existing in each other’s worlds around then. 

When Hubert opened his eyes, the young women looking down at him was a stranger. Or, as near a stranger as a sister could be.

She brought her hand up to his forehead, and it began to glow white, Faith magic pulsing through her and into Hubert’s aching body. 

“We have to keep the fever down,” Carmilla muttered, and her voice was soft. Nothing about Carmilla had ever been soft, not so long as Hubert knew. Not even when she cried was she so reserved and gentle. But she’d had no interest in Faith magic when they were children, either. Things changed. 

“Would it have killed you to take one day off? Lady Edelgard and the Empire would have survived, you know.” Even her teasing was soft, and it was making it hard for Hubert to get properly angry. Or maybe it was how his head felt like it was filled with cotton that was blocking out all the louder emotions.

“You would believe that,” Hubert replied quietly, and the words weren’t even properly bitter. 

Carmilla just shook her head. 

“I believe that you’re a person, Hubert. With your own needs and wants and life. I just don’t understand why you don’t.”

Hubert smiled, just a little, as he closed his eyes again. 

“Silly Carmilla, always misunderstanding the situation. Of course I’m a person, my very own. But I am a series of things before that, and Lady Edelgard’s vassal is first. That much you should be able to grasp. You’re the ever loyal daughter, after all, before you are a decent person. At least I do not pretend to be otherwise.”

Her weight on the bed suddenly disappeared. Hubert heard Carmilla slam the door shut on her way out, and then he let out a long, constrained breath that turned into a cough. He could not bear to sit up and search for any water, or any relief at all. Instead, he suffered through the coughing, until the hacking brought tears to his eyes. At length, the fit passed, and Hubert fell back into the stale pillows of his childhood bed, perfectly miserable. 

Even while he knew the answer, Hubert couldn’t help but wonder how he and Carmilla got to this point.

_________________________________________

They were both so tired.

On any given night, Hubert never slept any more than six hours. He was typically busy with some household related paperwork that Father had thrust upon him, or perhaps studying battle formations and old alliances and secret maps, or sometimes cutting into some obstacle’s flesh, or biting into his pillow to keep from screeching at the top of his lungs.

Lady Edelgard, conversely, was stone, kept a strict schedule for her sleeping and eating, and she never let weakness show. This week was draining her, though; draining them both. While Hubert stumbled through his days, dozing between meetings and staring at paperwork that he couldn't concentrate on, Lady Edelgard’s hands were shaking. They hadn’t done that in years, buried, buried with ghosts they refused to name.

But Wilhelm had yelled at her last week, hurling insults and accusations at her for no good reason. Wilhelm simply couldn’t move or live, and El was the only one who he could take it out on. The only one who gave him enough time to bear his ill will. 

But whenever she fought with Wilhelm, or Bryn was screaming too much, or Liesl cried— still acting like a little child rather than a girl of fourteen— Lady Edelgard found it impossible to sleep well. Every night for the past week, she’d been waking up with nightmares.

Lady Edelgard wasn’t sleeping for more than three hours at a time before the screaming, the screaming, the screaming started up again. Hubert knew it was best not to disturb her during those times, when she startled awake and her cries for help were silenced.

But from his room, Hubert could always hear her crying as El died all over again. 

They were both losing at least an hour of sleep to her nightmares every time they occurred, and most nights she suffered through two or three. The night terrors always rose up with greater frequency when Lady Edelgard was stressed— when she was scared, in pain, bleeding out even as no blood fell— and Wilhelm’s tantrum had been ill-timed.

The anticipation of Arundel’s first real war meeting had been particularly harrowing. 

Hubert and Lady Edelgard had been preparing their final plans and speeches for weeks. They were coming up on the last months before everything changed. Before they could stop being quiet, quiet, quiet, before they could stop slithering in the dark and start screaming for all of Fodlan to hear. Soon, they’d either burn the world to ash and rebuild it or die trying. It would be over.

Just a few more months.

And though Hubert managed to be decently eloquent as he mapped the tunnels of Garreg Mach with Jeritza, he could feel himself shaking apart almost as much as Lady Edelgard. 

In his own dreams, Hubert kept seeing Beron smiling at him.

He imagined handing Princess Petra a knife that she used to seal her own fate, bringing her along to a fight that wasn’t hers.

He saw El, bleeding and black and monstrous, prepared to do anything but let herself be strapped down by any chains again, no matter how benign seeming. 

Hubert had to admit when he wasn’t well. The last thing he needed was to be sent back to the Vestra estate and Mother and Carmilla again. But even as he took steps to try and minimize the damage— ceasing communication with Father, halting his dark magic lessons, taking _naps_— the anxiety was growing bigger in his chest. By the time Arundel’s war meeting finally arrived, he was a mess.

But that was just internally. Lady Edelgard— with the deep bruises under her eyes and the cuts she’d accidentally made on her palms and her hair in disarray— actually looked unkempt when Hubert arrived at her door that morning. Hubert said nothing at her pleading, manic eyes. He just shepherded Lady Edelgard back into her room.

Hubert cast his muffling spell, settled Lady Edelgard at her vanity, and grabbed a brush. He dusted powder into her hair to soak up the worst of the grease, and brushed out her white locks. Lady Edelgard had let her hair grow out so long in the years since it had changed color, and Hubert had been surprised that she did. But she confessed to him that, “I don’t want them to take anything else from me.” 

So, Hubert learned how to style hair. Even if her sisters could no longer do it, he could play with Lady Edelgard’s hair in various ways. Today, they just pinned some of it back with her ribbons.

Then, Lady Edelgard pulled the foundation out from her drawer, and he applied it to her face. They’d hid plenty of her bruises and scars over the years, whether they be self-inflicted, from training, old wounds, or just evidence of lack of sleep. Within minutes, it was suddenly impossible to tell that Lady Edelgard had spent most of the night crying rather than resting like a good princess. 

They found her gloves, a long, regal gown, and boots that clacked intimidatingly. Then Lady Edelgard went to dress behind her partition, and Hubert gathered up all her papers. As he thumbed through her plans and ideals, El asked, “Hubert?”

Safely guarded by that flimsy barrier, her voice was soft and… young. Vulnerable. 

“Yes, Lady Edelgard?” Hubert replied, already feeling too emotionally compromised by sleep and stress for whatever this conversation entailed.

“Do you think that what I’m doing is right?”

Hubert drew in a breath, and paused for a moment. He knew, even as he remained silent, that Lady Edelgard was shaking and growing more miserable with each second he let flit by. But as he blinked and looked down at Lady Edelgard’s papers, Hubert couldn’t help but take his time to consider that question.

Her carefully detailed speech talked about the Church, about how the Archbishop’s oppressive commitment to sameness had stifled and divided Fodlan. Part of the declaration mentioned the many issues created by the crests— inequality, avarice, wanton slaughter of those without— and that segued into her manifesto about the nobility. 

It was all very well thought out. All so… believable. Truly a cause worth dying for. And what else was there to die for, after all? The same broken cycle, perpetuated over and over again? Personal ambition? Because one was told to die? The Goddess?

Hubert couldn’t believe in any of it. Not in the old world, or any potential new one. As far as Hubert was concerned, all of it was rot, each ideology bound to crumble eventually no matter how it was created, maintained, and ultimately destroyed. Hubert didn’t know if Edelgard’s vision for a new Fodlan was right. He just knew he was tired of the old one. 

Hubert simply knew that he believed in El. 

“Do you think it’s right?” he asked back.

“Of course,” Edelgard snapped, frustration bleeding through her voice. “But I’m asking you—”

“Then that is enough,” Hubert said, interrupting El for the first time in years. She went quiet at his voice, and Hubert kept speaking. 

“People who will die for your cause will think it right, and people who fall against you and your cause will think it wrong. Or rather… they will think themselves right. That is all. Neither you nor I believe in the Church of Seiros’s divine truth, nor any other immutable truth in this world. There… there is nothing that is without question, or change. All any of us can do is choose a path to walk down, choose a way to live that is right in our own eyes; that we are not ashamed of. You believe it is wrong to let the Church’s crimes go unanswered any longer. You… El. You believe in that so much that you are willing to die for it. Therefore it doesn’t matter that others might call you wrong. Listen to your enemies, your critics to you heart’s content. But their truths are worth no more than yours, and if their arguments do not sway you, then do not sway. Do you have good reason to doubt the path you walk, El?”

Lady Edelgard was quiet for a long moment, taking her time, as Hubert had, to collect her thoughts.

Then she emerged from behind the partition, dressed in her crown and the ribbons she had worn since childhood, and she looked every inch the emperor she already was.

“No,” El declared, and Hubert smiled. 

“Then keep walking your path. And I will follow you wherever you go.”

_________________________________________

After the war meeting, they retreated to the gardens. The sun was out, tea was prepared, and they were both ever so slightly hysterical from the exhaustion and relief. The meeting had gone well, and Arundel dismissed them with little fuss, and now they had no work to occupy themselves with. It had been a long time since they had even a few moments for themselves, and neither were quite sure what to do with their manic energy and afternoon of peace.

But they were attempting to make the best of it, even as Hubert desperately tried to keep himself awake.

El rolled her eyes as he poured himself another cup of coffee.

“I don’t understand how you drink that stuff,” Lady Edelgard said, a smile on her face that was just large enough to count as laughter. 

Hubert intentionally picked up his cup and swallowed all of the scalding coffee while maintaining eye contact in order to startle a snort from Lady Edelgard.

“I don’t understand how you function without drinking it,” Hubert gasped around the burning in his mouth and throat. But Lady Edelgard had the back of her hand against her lips as she fought back giggles, so Hubert counted this as a success. A small smirk escaped him, and he tried desperately to pretend he was not in pain. He just picked up the pot with the coffee in it and poured himself more. 

Lady Edelgard snorted again. 

“Perhaps I should try it again. Though, I doubt it will taste any less vile.”

“Oh, it certainly won’t. I just hope you will not become so… stimulated again. Forgive me, my lady, but your physical stature does not match your grandness. Perhaps coffee does not suit you for that reason.”

“Just for that, I will now drink the whole pot and act perfectly composed after doing so. You will see, Hubert, I will do it.”

“That I do not doubt, Lady Edelgard.”

She took his cup from his hands, and sipped at the coffee. She wrinkled her nose a little at the taste, but it was not the dramatic display Lady Edelgard had made some years ago when Hubert first started drinking coffee. She might have been putting up a front as she drank deeply, but Hubert was inclined to wonder if Edelgard’s palate had simply refined. The plate of tea treats on their table was comprised of savory scones and biscuits dusted with only the barest amount to sugar. She’d grown up.

“Hubert,” Lady Edelgard said after drinking a fair amount of the coffee, a grave seriousness across her face. “My heart is beating too fast.”

Hubert laughed. 

“This isn’t funny! This is horrendous! I don’t even feel less tired, just— _Buzzing_. Hubert!”

He coughed into his fist to try and stop laughing, shaking his head at her distress. 

“It’ll fade,” he said, laughter not quite contained. 

Hubert gently reached over to take the cup from Lady Edelgard, and she was pouting mightily. She reached over to grab one of the biscuits to nibble on, to have something to do with her hands. It seemed she didn’t want any more tea.

“I’m being very serious, Hubert,” she said, not being serious at all. “I will be a ridiculous mess for the rest of the day, and then what will Lord Arundel say?”

“At least you will not be asleep.”

“I’m still tired! Just buzzing and tired! Coffee is false!”

Hubert laughed, louder and louder, and Lady Edelgard joined him after a moment. And for just a moment, instead of looking like an emperor and a marquis, generals and saviours and messiahs, they were laughing in the palace garden like a pair of children. They were hysterical off the taste of coffee and blood in their mouths, drunk on each other’s smiles. But El smiled so brightly, and Hubert was happy. How could they not laugh? 

He loved her, perhaps too much.

Hubert loved Edelgard so much he knew it was going to kill him.

_________________________________________

Hubert and Lady Edelgard and Princess Petra left Enbarr at dawn.

There was no one for Petra to bid goodbye to, so she gave her trunks and bags to the servants and waited in the carriage. 

Lady Edelgard had already said her goodbyes, to a resentful Wilhelm, an uncomprehending Brynhilde, and a miserable Liesl. Outside the palace, she stood off to the side with Lord Arundel’s hand digging into her shoulder. There was a package among her things that contained a red helm and a red cloak and a bag of money. Hubert already knew that Arundel was reminding her that the Kingdom and the Alliance would be easier to take without heirs, seeing as Faerghus had no king and old man Riegan was on his last leg. Lady Edelgard nodded, even as her hand gripped her dagger too tightly.

Hubert couldn’t stand next to her as he wanted too, because Lucille was hugging him. She did not grip tightly, and she did not make a scene. She was dressed all in black, and though Hubert knew that she was always garbed that way, he couldn’t help but think that Lucille looked like she was going to a funeral. Perhaps that was apt. The world as they knew it’s funeral.

Mother came up next, she laid a kiss on his cheek and told Hubert to be good, to be polite and well-mannered and to watch after himself. She didn’t tell him to have fun, and her eyes were too dour to even ask him to perform well. Mother knew what was about to happen; what Father hadn’t told her, Mother no doubt figured out for herself. She knew she wasn’t sending Hubert off to school.

Jonathan didn’t like to touch people, but he managed to mutter, “Goodbye. Good luck.”

Hubert nodded back at him, and his little brother’s damning eyes were just as understanding as Mother’s. But it was not with pity that he regarded Hubert, just accusation. Hubert really couldn’t find it within himself to care. 

Carmilla’s nails bit into the back of his hand when she shook it. Hubert did relish when she said, “Try to set the bar relatively high, because I will enjoy clearing it when I arrive at Garreg Mach.” He didn’t bother telling Carmilla there would be no Garreg Mach for her to attend next year. Hubert did place his hands on Carmilla’s shoulders and lay a kiss on her forehead, as he had done with Lucille. She was still startled, and Hubert smirked at her discomfort, smiled at how her eyes softened and she was forced to bite her tongue to keep quiet.

Carmilla would be the one who never forgave him.

Father did not touch Hubert, he knew that his son would never allow it. But Father was the only one who bid Hubert farewell with the words, “I love you.” 

The man’s shoulders were slumped, and sadness— which had always seemed so foreign on his face— cloaked Father. They both knew that Father was a dead man walking. He'd been one for a long time, but those borrowed days were just about up. Hubert had learned everything he needed to know about being Marquis Vestra, Minister of the Imperial Household. 

Father wasn’t needed by either Hubert, or by Lady Edelgard any more. He, like everything else they didn’t need or want in this world, would be swept aside.

As Hubert joined Lady Edelgard in the carriage that would take them to Garreg Mach and the beginning of their plans, he breathed freely for the first time in a decade. As Enbarr grew smaller behind their backs, and Hubert felt larger and larger. He almost felt like they could actually take on the Church, Fodlan, Those Who Slither in the Dark, the whole world. Hubert actually felt free.

He thought of Beron and Marta, buried under the palace. Hubert and Lady Edelgard would free them too, take their memories with them out into the wider world. Together, they would them tear that world down and free all that had been trapped beneath the weight of its lies and its blood and its screaming. 

Or they would die trying, and Hubert, El, Beron, and Marta would be together again, lost in the swirling winds of half-forgotten memories and half-recorded tragedies. 

As they bumped along, Hubert resolved to die screaming. That would be good enough. After a lifetime of silence, to die fighting and bleeding and screaming so that the world remembered them would be good enough. To die for Edelgard was good enough. 

As they drove to their destiny, El discreetly reached for Hubert’s hand. And they held one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! 
> 
> If you've read through all of this, thank you so much! I would love kudos and/or comments if you feel so inclined to leave them, especially as a lot of this was just headcanon dumping. I'd really, really liked to know if you enjoyed this little project that just consumed a month of my life. And if you have any lingering questions... I likely have answers!
> 
> Either way, thank you so much for your time!
> 
> \- AT


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